The Passage of Time
by Laryna6
Summary: Post-game. Three years after Asch's return Luke is called to Auldrant's surface by a cult who expected Lorelei. The Score was like a drug and the world wants another fix. Luke won't let that happen and neither will his greatest enemy. LukeAsch, others
1. So,

Disclaimer: I don't own Tales of the Abyss, Tales of Symphonia, Tales of Phantasia, or anything else involved with the Tales series that's mentioned/referenced/has a fonon sentience/summon spirit stolen from it in this fic. Namco, Namco's Tales Studio, and everyone else with an actual trademark/copyright owns it. I'm not making any money, please don't sue me, no infringement intended. I need my money if I'm going to be able to buy the Tales of the Abyss anime I've heard rumors about.

Okay. First fic in the fandom, I've logged 100 hours but this was written after the characters mugged me while half-asleep and the sentence structure's probably screwy plus the voices do not meet my standards. Post-game, sticking prettymuch with canon although given all the easter eggs I probably contradicted text in a library somewhere or something.

The fonon sentiences are based on the summon spirit versions in other games. The sylph trinity with Yutis are from Symphonia: there's a bow names Yutis available at the Casino which I'm getting as soon as I get Jade's title that makes the chips cheaper. Undine's appearance is Phantasia, Rem is angelic in Legendia (own it, would be playing it but Tales of the Abyss needed a second playthrough stat).

This is post-game, using the information from the sidequest which reveals that that was Asch with Luke's memories, not Luke at all, and born from, wait a minute, this is the defintion of a fonon sentience, and according to it it's a clump of that fonon large enough to think with the right frequency... Luke's a seventh-fonon-only replica, he's got Lorelei's frequency, the equivalents of the fonon sentiences in other games have MPD all over the place... Luke is Lorelei.

Sweet! He's not dead!

-

Alright. He picked himself up and tried to dust the snow that had drifted into the cave off his clothing. It was a futile effort, especially since there was a snowstorm outside. Oh, wait. He could do fonic artes now. Well, not actually fonic artes, no, but hymns. So getting rid of the snow and keeping it off him was… He whistled once, and after that sort of kept singing on the inside. He'd had to learn to do that before once, because people thought it was pretty weird when someone was singing four different songs while carrying on a conversation.

Oh, hey, he could fly! That was going to make everything much easier. He could just hop over the mountains to Keterberg instead of having to wait for the current Albiore. Or one of the Albiores. He bet Guy had one. No, wait, hyperresonance. His first experience with it was teleporting.

Hey, he was getting the hang of this pretty quick. Of course, Luke had gone from blank slate, with neurons that had missed the age at which humans were supposed to learn to walk and talk, to a half-decent fake adult within seven years despite being sheltered by everyone, no matter if their intentions had been good or bad. Guy had apologized to him for sabotaging his learning, and that was, well, Guy, and he'd been there for him more than his supposed family.

And Lorelei had gone from raw sentience to someone able to fake humanity decently well in ten days, so he wasn't inherently dumb.

A large enough cluster of fonons would become an incarnation of the sentience. The majority of the replicas hadn't had enough to do more than match the intelligence of their original, and frankly neither had Luke (Asch's intelligence, that was). But he had a lot more fonons now, and access to Lorelei's memories, although there wasn't a real distinction there. Luke wasn't Asch, even isofonic replicas weren't originals for humans because of a lot of technical stuff. Asch had all seven types of fonons, Luke had only one, the seventh. And a collection of seventh fonons with Lorelei's fonon frequency was Lorelei. That was how the whole fonon sentience thing worked. There had been two of them floating around since Luke was forcibly separate, but the same person.

He thought he might want to go with Luke, as a name. Unless Asch his actual replica had done the smart thing and taken it back. Oh, right! Asch deserved to know that he was back. _Hey, Asch!_

Silence.

Oh no. _Asch, you had better not be dead! I did _not _let you move into my body so that you could get it killed!_

This time there was a response, the sort of indeterminate noise made by someone really shocked and trying to figure out what to say. _Dr… Rep… Luke?_ Asch didn't seem to know what to call him.

_Luke works. Unless you want it back? It was yours first. It's better than Lorelei. I mean, I'm a fundamental element of existence, I don't have a gender as Lorelei but I'm male right now and I don't want a girl's name. So if you want it back I can come up with something, like you did._

_You're alive? _Asch just seemed shocked, not knowing what to think yet.

_Yeah. Didn't Jade figure it out?_

_He was the one who had to explain to Tear that you were gone for good, that there wasn't anything left of you but memories in my head. _

_Wait, you have my memories?! Oh, yeah. Right. It does work that way. Can you still do normal fonic artes? _

_What does that have to do with anything? _

_Asch, it's important. _Deadly seriously so.

_Yes, I can._

Phew._ I didn't save you for you to not be you. If you can still do normal fonic artes then you must have brought your first through sixth fonons into my body with you, which means you aren't me. Thank my older siblings. _

_What's going on? _Okay, now Asch was starting to act more like his old, grumpy, resentful self.

_Someone tried to re-do what Dr. Grant did. _Weird how over the years 'Dr. Julia Grant' turned into Yulia Jue. Of course, Tear's family hadn't wanted to broadcast that they were descended from the most famous person in the new history.

Luke surveyed the bodies with, well, not satisfaction. The seventh fonon was so apt to be used to heal and protect for good reason, and he'd always hated that people had to die. Still, it was a good thing they'd been stopped. _Only this time I know better than to give blank-check favors to people. _She'd just wanted to know how to save her world. She hadn't wanted this, but he'd had to keep his word once the contract was made. The best prediction of the future one-seventh of the universe could make. Man, it had been hard to figure out a way to outsmart himself. _They summoned a bunch of the seventh fonon to the planetary glyph, and here I am. Where are you, anyway?_

_The throne room in Baticul. Wait, they tried to summon Lorelei and they got you? _

_I know! That's why it's weird that Jade didn't figure it out. I thought_ he_ was going to be the one to bring me back. I think I'd better just head over there before they think you've gone even more crazy. _

_Wait…_

He should have waited. When he appeared, he found himself in the middle of a scene that rendered him just as wordless as his words had rendered Asch.

There was a wedding, a royal wedding. Natalia's wedding. Officiated by Anise. Tear, who he managed a smile for, was the maid of honor. The best man was Jade. Guy was a groomsman. And so was Asch.

Natalia was getting married to _Emperor Peony_? Well, it made sense, combining the two kingdoms, but what the… His shocked reverie was interrupted when Jade, taking his role as best man a bit too traditionally, stabbed him in the gut. Or tried to, he adjusted the water-keep away at the last microsecond. Why would Jade attack Luke on sight?

Oh, he didn't look like Luke. He'd manifested the way he'd appeared back then. Better fix that.

Okay, sudden shapechanging wasn't going to make Jade less suspicious.

"Wait, he's really Luke!" Asch raised a hand, head clearing. Oh damn, he'd given him a headache, hadn't he? He was still new at this and he'd probably been shouting. "Or something." Okay, that part didn't help matters much.

"Luke is dead." And Jade was going to figure a way to _take apart_ the person who dared impersonate his lost… friend? Oh, and played on Asch's feelings.

He was in so much trouble. "No, it's him, it really is him!" And he found his arms full of Tear.

"You're right." Jade put his spear away. "I'd recognize that hopelessly brainless look anywhere."

"I come back from the dead and you…" His reflex response was finally overridden by laughter. "Same old Jade. Who are you calling brainless? I thought you'd figure out how to bring me back within a year, and I wind up summoned by some ex-Order members wanting a replacement score. Have you finally gone senile, old man?"

"Replacement score?" Anise, amazingly, was all business.

"Luke!" Luke had to brace himself when he was tackled by ring-bearer Florian. Great to see the kid was still holding up, he'd been worried when it started to take this long that he'd be dead before Luke figured out how to manifest or Jade got his act together. He took the opportunity to stabilize him enough he could use Daathic fonic artes safely.

"Luke!" Natalia cheered.

Peony was laughing with delight and poking Jade in the ribs.

Guy was hanging back a bit. "Uh, Tear…"

"Oh." She blushed. "Right."

Tear dislodged herself, Florian stayed where he was, and now he didn't have to approach Tear to do it Guy punched Luke. "What took you so long!"

"Blame Jade!"

"My my my. I thought you might have finally outgrown pinning the blame for your own mistakes on others." Jade had gotten his composure back.

"Hey, Dr. Balfour, define a fonon sentience." Luke folded his arms.

Jade blinked. "A collection of first through seventh fonons large enough to possess a mind attuned to the correct fre…" He blinked again. And again. "Is this how all of you feel all the time?"

"Hey, Jade. Who are you calling really stupid?" Anise folded her arms.

"Why did you think I would possibly think that you were really stupid, as you put it?" Jade managed an innocent but not really look.

"I've dreamed of seeing that look on his face for years!" Peony was laughing so hard he had to brace himself on Natalia. "Luke, I'm making you a Malkuth nobleman. Jade, realizing he's been an idiot? Priceless!"

"I thought you'd bring me back, so I was focusing on getting everything under control. Then I looked at the time and wondered what was taking you so long, so I started getting to work on it. But I've never manifested from scratch before so I didn't have a clue how."

"That was what was causing those odd resonances!" Anise breathed a sigh of relief.

"Actually, that was them trying to figure out how to summon me."

"Wait, summon you?" Guy seemed to have finally started paying attention to the aspects of this conversation other than that this was his best friend Luke and he was finally home.

"Luke was a manifestation of Lorelei all along." Jade adjusted his glasses. "That _would_ explain how a fonon sentience could possibly be so unwise as to pen the score."

"Hey, I'd only been dealing with humans for a year and three months, I can't break a pact, and Yulia didn't watch her wording. I made that pact to give her a way that was certain to get rid of the miasma and keep humanity from dying out, not to predict everything down to the weather! But yeah, you're right, I didn't think it through." He sighed. "Wait, weren't you guys getting married?"

He saw the dawning realization. The ceremony!

"Nice going." Asch had gotten to his feet and put his hand on Luke's shoulder, tugging a bit.

"Yeah, sorry, I still need to work on thinking things through."

Yulia's descendant smiled in relief. "I'm just glad you're back." Tear had found Florian's padded box, dropped to greet Luke, but the rings didn't seem to be in it.

Luke fixed that casually, then winked at a surprised Tear and let Asch pull him to the side. Luke had needed to study this, and the fact that he'd known it by instinct had actually made it harder. The way other people did fonic artes just wasn't how it worked for him.

"Luke, change," Asch muttered.

Again? Oh, this was what he'd been wearing when he'd died. Nowhere near formal enough for Natalia's wedding. "Thanks," he murmured back once he'd decided that he had to still have a right to viscount regalia, the same that Asch wore. Wait, Asch was in viscount clothing? He had to smile. At least he'd managed to get his family back.

"I owe you." It wasn't just that, though, wasn't just debt_. When I woke up, I didn't know who I was for awhile. I remembered every time we met through two sets of eyes. I thought we'd merged, or I hoped we had even though I knew better even before Jade gave me a second opinion. You wanted me to live so much you didn't mind… I treated you like that and you still…_ Asch hadn't been able to understand it, shaped by a father who knew he was doomed and Van's false care.

_I wasn't Luke. I wasn't you. But you were born because of me and I was born because of you. Of course we're family. Of course I didn't want you to die._ Of course I wanted us to be friends, brothers.

_I was born because of you? The score? _

_No. I promised Yulia a plan that would save humanity certain to succeed. Certain despite humanity's rage against fate, despite my own horror at what I had done. I boxed myself into a corner, Lorelei did. I couldn't outmaneuver myself, and none of the others cared. It wasn't until later that I realized that I could use the 'Light of the Sacred Flame' part of the prophecy to give you my self as well as my power. A human wouldn't have the power, but what about someone like me who had different experiences, thought differently? They might have a chance at finding a way. I didn't seriously think I'd be able to break my own prophesy, it was mostly desperation and wanting to suffer with all of you even if I couldn't do anything else that made me become Luke, but I did it and it worked._ He'd never been prouder of himself then in that moment.

_So I _was_ just your ashes._

_Don't say that. It's not true. You were why I was able to save everyone. You taught me how to be human, not just a force. Humans fight the inevitable, forces know better. _

_I taught you?_ Asch doubted that.

_I was with you until this replica was created, a body entirely composed of seventh fonons, and my changed self was drawn into it. I didn't know what I was missing, but I missed you._

Asch had Luke's memories. He couldn't argue with that. Luke had felt alone in what should have been his family's house, the same way Asch had felt alone in the world without them. Because Asch, not the fon Fabres, had been Luke's family, his shelter from the strange and cruel world.

_I'm sorry,_ they both thought at once, and had to smile inside. _Stop apologizing!_ That shared thought was deliberate.

_I guess I did rub off on you._ Asch, looking back, didn't think that was a good thing. _Jade did say that it was weird that we had such similar personalities. _

_Yeah. We weren't treated alike by our family, which blew the theory he had out of the water. _

_And I thought being compared to you was an insult to _me_. _

_Don't say that. _

_I know, _and he did. _Is that why it feels like…_

_Like we're complete, we can relax now?_

_It feels like I was missing you, and now you're found and I can stop worrying. You feel like you were lost and worried, and now you're found. _

_Weird, huh. Home should be the fon belt. But I don't have anything in common with any of them except for being the same type of being and they're not you guys._

_I'm sorry for threatening to hurt them to make you shut up and not make me feel guilty for what I was doing to you, _Asch apologized. He'd clearly been wanting to say that for a long time. It had just been a passing 'conversation' in Ortion Caverns, but what Asch being willing to threaten that had meant to Luke… It had hurt, and now he had Luke's memories Asch knew what his striking out at fate had done to someone who had been innocent.

Although could Lorelei be called innocent of any of it?

_The closest thing you had to them were the other god-generals. _Of course Asch hadn't understood. _But why… _Luke glanced meaningfully at Natalia.

_She'd spent all that time trying to get you to remember so that she could meet me again, and all that time I was alive and I didn't let her know. You were trying to be me for them, and even though you didn't know you weren't me you still felt that the person they loved wasn't you._ That really made Asch sick. Luke had been a kid, and…

_Now do you get why I imprinted on Vandesdelca like a baby chick? If it weren't for Guy, he would have been the only one who actually gave me any guidance. The others babied me, and they all got what they wanted. Well, maybe the reason he saw _me _was just that he knew I wasn't you. But… _

_I understand why you called him Master Van now._

_He was trying to destroy the world, but he was still my father. _Foster father, creator, teacher, family. _And he was Yulia's descendant._ Anise giving a sermon? His mind was boggling enough to offset any possible boredom.

_Were you in love with Yulia?_

_The same way I'm in love with Tear. _The closest thing he had to a mother, a teacher, a guide. Someone who would tell him when he was being an idiot, noble or god: it hadn't mattered to either of them.

_So that's going to end up like Natalia and I_. Asch explained, knowing how the sight of Natalia and Peony had shocked Luke. _I'm not Luke. She thought she had the best of both worlds, that she had you back and that she had her childhood sweetheart, and I care a lot about her but she was the one that ended it and it was the right thing to do. I wasn't either of the people she thought I was, and she was right. I was trying to be that kid, I was trying to be you, and I thought I was in love with her but when she forced me to face up to it, I don't know who I am and I didn't know if I was in love with her. It hurt her, but it hurt her more to have to deal with the fact that all I really wanted to have with her was a delusion, not love._

_Maybe I should pick another name too. Luke was both of us, not just one or the other. We both are him but we both aren't. Michael fon Fabre? Does that sound good?_

_Michael? What does that mean?_

_It's from a language that was ancient in the Dawn Age. It means "Who is like God?"Dr. Michael Southern-Cross was what I called myself back then._

"_Who is like the god of the sacred flame?" It's better than "Ashes of the sacred flame."_

_The flame wouldn't exist without those ashes, and there were still embers. I mean, who else can use hyperresonance but you? I wouldn't let just anyone have that power._

Asch declined to comment. _Anise kept that promise to Ion she told you about, she's the head of the Order of… she's the head of _your_ order._ That was going to take getting used to. _I'm a god-general still, Anise wouldn't let me retire, and so is Tear. There were a lot of people who wanted to copy the scam Sync pulled, only they had to make up a fake score and it's been easy enough to prove they're invalid. Jade's not technically a member of the Order, but he's the representative for Malkuth the way I am to Kimlasca._

_There were some people who wanted to have a real score, not a fake. _

So much was going on that Asch hadn't caught that, not really. He sucked in a breath.

_I took care of them. I'm not going to let that happen again._ He was a god now: he could find ways out of killing. Hopefully.

_I'm not getting a headache_, Asch reported, changing the subject and moving his shoulders testingly. _But I feel tired. Is it a side effect of this?_

_You're not me, but you're still my isofone._ How to explain this? _Look at Florian. _

The replica was a study in contrasts: both utterly excited and trying not to fall asleep on his feet. _He's entirely made up of seventh fonons and he's a fon master. That's as sensitive to me as anyone but you can be, and I had a very rough fifteen minutes. _

_You're tired? The _seventh fonon_ is tired?_

_Not so much tired as… Yeah, tired. What with the score, being trapped in the core, Van, Luke's entire life, Replica Hod… I had a lot to fix. The celestial harmonies are still pretty disrupted. The dissonance was what was giving Luke those headaches and Lorelei the all-over aches. Then I had to take physical form, break a binding spell using the planetary arte, and I want to find out how they knew about that, and remember how to think like a human. When I'm in concert, the resonating power means it would take… I can't think of anything that would make me tired except fighting my siblings when I'm healthy. When I'm not, I get dissonances and counter-resonances cancelling out or using up a lot of my power, and I end up tiring myself out. _

_Ouch. _

_Yeah. I wanted to have a big party while I was still awake, but they arranged their party first. How much longer is this going to take?_

_Five hours. What did you expect, it's a state wedding._

…

_Can't last that long?_

_No. _Damn it. _I need to let the body go to sleep so I can focus on getting everything straightened out. I could force myself to stay awake and focus, but if I did eventually the power drain would make me lose hold on the body and it would disperse._

_You're not disappearing again, you just got here. _Asch caught Tear and Jade's eyes, nodding at Luke and then at the exit. Luke, amazed at the rapport they now had, mimed tiredness. Tear looked concerned even after Luke reassured her while Jade nodded minutely. _Come on._

_You can stay, I can…_ He'd be mobbed if he tried to leave by himself without the protection of Asch's glares. _I can use hyperresonance to get to the field where you showed up?_ It was an amazingly easy target.

_You can't get to your room?_

_I can't figure out where it is relative to here well enough right now, _he confessed.

_Friends don't let friends use fonic artes while suffering the contamination effect. _

_Friends? _The tiny thought escaped Luke, and he felt ashamed. Asch had said that they were friends now, he shouldn't act so amazed by it. It was distrusting Asch.

_You have lots of reasons not to like me, let alone trust me._ Asch tugged him to the side as Anise briefed Natalia and Jade poked Peony.

_I don't… not like you._ Luke liked Asch. _Wait, that didn't make any sense._

_Come on, let's get you home._

Home? Why not a guest room in the palace, Luke wondered. That would be closer, and less awkward.

_They're all full, and so are the inn and even the manors' guest rooms. You can use my bed. It's just as much yours as mine. _

_Okay. Sylph's going to yell at me, I shouldn't have gotten myself this messed up. I need to take better care of myself, or there are going to be babies born with three heads…_

… Asch was going to ask if Luke was serious but then realized that yes, he was. This was still hard to get used to. _Did you have a choice?_

_Not really. I had to manifest to stop them. But I should have been paying better attention and prevented myself from having to do that to stop them. _

_Don't let it happen again. _

Luke nodded as they made it out and were joined by a group of half white knights and half oracle knights that escorted them through the crowd to the manor. _There are so many replicas here. I'm glad they made it._

_Made it?_ Asch snorted. _Of course we honored their sacrifice, and yours. Anise gave them a huge chunk of Padamiya._

Anise had given away Order lands? Money-grubbing Anise had? _It's not that, I was worried that they'd destabilize before I got here. Like what happened to Ion, only Ion was made to be stable enough to read the score and use Daathic fonic arts, at least a bit. They weren't, and since they're natural seventh fonists if someone made them heal too much they could end up like he did. _

_Some of them did. You can prevent it?_

_I already did for Florian. I'll get the rest done when I can. _

_Don't push yourself. _

_Yes, mother. _

There was silence then.

Luke knew why. He wasn't going to blame Jade or himself for it. There was nothing he could have done. His fonon could heal surface wounds, poisons, even death, but like the best doctors his parents could find had been unable to do anything about his headaches even he didn't know how to fix a body turned against itself. His mother's medicine had been a poison, meant to kill the rogue flesh faster than it killed her. In the end, it had been a race against time and he'd lost.

_You didn't want to send me to get the mushroom. Not alone. You wanted to help her, you wanted to come with me. And you didn't even ask to come with me. _Remembering how he'd treated Luke was making Asch hate himself again, and Luke didn't want that.

_You would have said no, and what mattered was getting her the mushroom as soon as possible._ Luke had been there with her for years. Asch had deserved a chance to do something for her, even if it was yet another rejection of Luke.

_I'm sorry. _

_Don't let it happen again?_ Luke echoed Asch's previous answer to this sort of dilemma, half-jokingly.

_I won't. _Asch's response was serious, an oath, and Luke's breath caught in his throat. _How lonely were you in the core? I know how lonely you were here. Now. _They walked through the gates and through the door that had once been the limit of Luke's world.

He couldn't keep the words from coming, the memory of those two thousand years of helpless imprisonment etched so deep that only Luke's vibrancy let him feel that this was real. He should be Lorelei more, he shouldn't drown himself in memories that weren't that happy either and try to ignore the reality of what he'd been through, but it was better than remembering near-endless despair. _I was alone and all I had to look forward to was the murder of a world for the sake of a new one, knowing that it and all the pain that came with it was and would be my fault. _

_And then…_

"Master Asch?" Ramdas hurried forward. "Is this, is this, Master Luke! Welcome home!" He bowed, and it was strange to see Ramdas let gladness override his well-trained formality. "It's good to see you alive and well."

"It's good to see you too." He went over and shook his hand, insisting on it.

"Can I get you anything, Master Luke? We still have all of your clothing and other possessions, and the kitchen staff has been helping prepare for the banquet, so there's any sort of food you might like, just say the word."

Oh, food. Right. "Water would be fine." He'd probably better start with the easy stuff. "I just got back and I need to rest up, could you bring it to Asch's room?" If that was okay with Asch.

"Our room," Asch reminded him. It was traditional for Kimlascan nobles to have their children of the same gender share a room, in preparation for military barracks and noisy husbands, even though unlike most people they could afford having multiple rooms.

"Right."

"At once, Master Luke." Ramdas signaled a maid as Luke went over to the memory circle and focused. That was taking a bit of a risk, but it meant that if his body destabilized he had a record of what it had been like to use to restore it. He hadn't been able to use his memories of his body as Luke, they had been scrambled in the fallout of his release and death.

"Come on," Asch called, and Luke followed obediently. He just knew Asch's smirk was due to reminiscing about how he wished Luke had been this obedient (to him instead of other people) before. "Do you think you'll be awake in time for the banquet?"

He checked the time. "It's not even noon yet." And it wouldn't be a royal banquet if it ended before three in the morning.

"Just checking." Luke hadn't yawned yet: Asch did it now. Luke had better get to bed before Asch got even more of it via resonance. As it was, he was going to need to catnap for a bit if he wanted to be able to stand upright during the procession, let alone walk. "You're going to fall asleep in your uniform?"

Oh, right. Not that he actually cared, but he didn't want to get Asch's linens torn or anything.

He heard Asch talking his clothes off the normal way and opened an eye.

"Move over." Asch poked him in the side when he was in nightclothes.

Normal people shared beds all the time, even with perfect strangers. There was only so much room at inns, and often a peasant family would all share the same bed. Luke, even on the journey, had usually slept alone because, "I thrash around and kick people in my sleep." Side effect of not sharing a bed as a child the way Asch had, even if only with Mother when Father wasn't home, and getting bad habits. _Normal_ people had trouble sleeping alone. Luke had been kept awake at first by Tear's breathing in the same room, Jade had faked snoring to make his life miserable, and Anise snored no matter what anyone did. Unless he exhausted himself during the day, and that had happened a lot, especially at first, he could be up half the night. He'd been a brat back then, and being a sleep-deprived one hadn't made it easier on anyone.

"You look too drained to move a muscle." Luke contradicted him by rolling over, obeying Asch's request.

"You're right." Except for breathing and so on, but his body was doing that automatically, thank goodness.

"Go to sleep," Asch ordered, climbing in next to him, and it was what Luke had always wanted. Someone who knew what he was, saw him when they looked at him, and didn't despise the childlike fool or fear the god's power. Since Asch knew what he was getting into (how could he not?) Luke gladly fell asleep.

In the instant that he did Asch's half-shut eyes opened as he became almost completely awake. Almost. "He wasn't kidding about the resonance." True, he'd been run ragged with preparations for the last few weeks, but he was a god-general, he was used to that.

He remembered Tear teaching Luke (no one had ever taught him: they'd thought Van was) how to feel fonons with his fon slots, to hear them. This close, his well-trained senses could hear a dreaming song from Luke now that he wasn't fighting off a drowsy one. Lorelei's exhaustion was far more effective than even Yulia's first fonic hymn.

A happy song, a song of mending things and full of hope for the future. Aware of fonons or not, no one could be unaffected by this. Other than the Grand Fonic Hymn, he couldn't think of a more well-omened song for Natalia's wedding.

The Grand Fonic Hymn. Symbol of Yulia's pact with Lorelei. Tear was going to sing it at noon.

He had to get back to the cathedral.

The mysterious group that had summoned Lorelei attempting to create a new score might have been smart enough to do it while the Order was occupied with the wedding and its security, but surely they hadn't anticipated this, use of the planetary fonic arte or no.

Surely not.

Well, they couldn't have predicted Luke breaking free and coming here (not Lorelei doing that, at least, unless they had figured out what Jade hadn't). However, everyone knew that Tear, the only person in the world capable of it, had been planning to sing the Grand Fonic Hymn. Asch had never been religious, and was there a point in praying to Luke for Luke's sake? He'd never been good at looking after himself, as Luke or as Lorelei.

Thank the gods that there were six more of them. Surely one of them had to be sensible. Luke had mentioned Sylph…

Judging from the screaming he heard the instant he left the soundproofed manor and saw the _fonon tornado_ bearing down on the castle that was causing it, that prayer might not have been the best idea.


	2. What

There was no way for Asch to stop something like that. He didn't like having to do it, it was probably his own mess and the child, no, man who now looked younger than him (even if only by three years instead of thirteen) had just gone to sleep. Not to mention that he'd spent those three years being forced into truly relying on himself both by Luke's memories and his friends' pushing. He wasn't someone who simply reacted anymore, he wasn't someone who demanded unreasonable things of children, he was a man in control of himself despite the careful manipulations Van Grants had used on both him and Luke to keep them children.

He hadn't even seen that the chains were there until he'd seen how they were placed on Luke and realized he bore the same ones.

The fate of Auldrant at stake and he'd wanted to squabble over who Van loved more. Sickening.

He wasn't that weak-hearted trash anymore. He'd wanted to be the rock Luke leaned on from now on, to repay abandoning him and never giving him anything but abuse while on the other hand taking his life, in the end.

Guy had been the one to force him to .see that if he'd taken Luke's life he had damn well better start living it.

He'd thought Luke was weak and he'd given up like that, when Luke never had. Trying to be Luke when he woke up because Luke, in the end, had been the stronger one.

Like he was stronger now, and Asch had wanted to save him but it looked like he'd just made things worse and now Luke was going to have to clean up Asch's mess. Again. Luke had spent his entire life doing that.

Not anymore, he promised himself again.

But the shield that protected the capital from war spells was a second away from tearing like cheap paper. _Luke! _

The old link hadn't conveyed feelings, what he felt was through his attunement to, resonance with Luke's fonons. Alarm, wakefulness, an increase in the resonance as Lorelei used the fonons in Asch to look through him, a disconcerting experience, and then real alarm.

Not panic, but something that would have turned into it if Luke were any weaker. Instead resolve replaced it and he could feel it as the city's defenses were replaced by something that made the hymn's protective spell look like that cheap paper did next to fonic armor.

_I didn't even think of that!_ Asch somehow knew that of course Luke's 'that' was the Grand Fonic Hymn. An instant later they were next to Tear (of course Luke could find Tear) and Luke was frantically telling her not to sing it.

The wedding had already been disrupted since Princess Natalia had felt the attack on the wards and everyone was in the process of scurrying to a safe place or their emergency station.

"The fonon level," Jade started to ask Luke: Luke cut him off.

"Yeah, Slyph. Asch realized Tear was going to sing the hymn and prayed to her. She's trying to kill Tear."

"Wait a second, Sylph?" Anise knew that Luke wouldn't lie like this, but they all knew that the other fonon sentiences, although more understood than Lorelei, weren't in the habit of manifesting like this, especially in response to a mere prayer.

"They all felt me get a body, and Asch has my fonon frequency. She though he was me: that's why she listened." Luke looked up. "I can't keep her out, not for long, and she'll call in Rem and Ifrit for backup pretty soon. She's not going to let me go through that again."

"You mean, the Grand Fonic Hymn?" Tear seemed a bit confused. "But it freed Lorelei from Van."

"By reminding me of the pact. The problem is that it could be used to make a new pact or restart the old one, and you're the only person left in Auldrant who knows it and is capable of understanding it." Asch could feel, now that he looked at Luke's abstracted expression, some form of argument going on. Slyph's presence was all around and she was indeed yelling at Luke.

"Can you convince her to stop the attack long enough for her to cool down?" Jade was all business, the scientist suppressed by the soldier whose emperor and future empress were at risk.

"Slyph doesn't stay mad, but that's because she barely ever needs to." As witness the instant decision to apply lethal force to a threat. "She wants the threat the Grand Fonic Hymn poses nullified. Killing Tear is the most direct method."

Despite the immediate problem, Jade was interested to note Luke's mask slipping. When he was being Luke he acted like Luke. When he was dealing with something in Lorelei's domain he could use words like nullified and appeared capable of… no, saying he hadn't been capable of logic before was insulting him. "How much time do we have?" They might need to sacrifice Tear to save everyone else here.

Asch's sword had begun to leave his sheath when he paused.

"Slyph doesn't need a curse slot. If you can cast fonic artes of her type then you're vulnerable," Luke confirmed Asch's paranoia as Asch forcefully pushed the sword back in and removed his hand from the hilt.

Jade should have guessed. "Is there a way to satisfy Sylph that the Hymn will no longer pose a threat?"

"That's what I'm negotiating about. She wants Tear dead on general principles and because she's Julia's descendant and Van's sister, but if I erase her memories of it and we destroy everything linked to the hymns…"

A strange gasping sound came from Tear, and then she started to frantically grasp for breath. Of course: Sylph could use the air fonons to not let her breathe. Luke's eyes widened and a hiss of indrawn breath appeared to ease Tear's pain, although she still couldn't speak. "I can keep her from dying of lack of air too, but…" Not for long. "I'm sorry, Tear."

They all could tell that Tear would be saying, "Don't blame yourself, you idiot," in her strangely consoling way if she could speak.

No more apologies, no more excuses, no more helplessness. Asch, Tear, and Natalia, as well as Florian who hid behind the altar, all sensed Luke's determination in the face of helplessness turn into anger, turn into rejection of fate.

And Tear fell to her knees, lungs heaving to bring in life-giving breaths.

Luke also sighed with relief.

"If I may ask, how did you get Sylph to cease her attack?" Both information on a sentience and valuable tactical data: of course Jade just had to know.

"I told her that this was my problem, and if she killed one of my friends because she thought I was too weak to handle it then I'd be really angry with her."

"Is that all it took?" Natalia had been busy casting defensive spells on everyone in sight during most of the conversation.

"She's my big sister, even though we're not a normal family. Not to mention that she hates it when people_ stay_ angry and since we're both associated with communication I would have been practically screaming how angry I was at her for the next several thousand years at least, even if I wasn't talking to her." Luke wiped a few drops of sweat off his forehead. "But I'd better keep that promise to make sure the Hymn's not a threat, because otherwise she'll do it anyway to keep me safe."

"Do I have to forget it?" Tear would if it was necessary, but the hymn was… Ion's last gift, and Van's lullaby: so many memories and her most powerful spells.

"She can find you now, and she'll know right away if you start singing any of it even though it's a prayer to me, because sound travels through air." In other words, if Tear used any of those spells she would die.

"What would the Grand Fonic Hymn do, exactly?" Anise asked. "Would you really have to make a new score?"

Luke grimaced. "If they'd managed to bind me with the Planetary Fonic Arte, and she'd sung it then, I'd probably be making one now. I wouldn't have a chance to say no. And this time, it would be one that I couldn't get around by becoming human. The Score was meant to be a _certain_ method of saving Auldrant and bringing it prosperity. That means that it has to be one that as far as I know I have no chance whatsoever of preventing, one _that no one_ _does_. As far as I know, at least, and I know a lot. I scattered the catalysts, but the Grand Fonic Hymn would still… I have to comply with a pact. The Laws of the universe are more important than anything, they have to be or _everything_ dies. The Hymn would make it so that I wouldn't see anything wrong with there being a score anymore. I wouldn't object to making one, I wouldn't be able to really feel how _wrong_ it was when it was being sung." He shook his head. "That was why I didn't tell Julia to reword her request. I couldn't think of that until it was too late."

"Julia? Yulia Jue?"

Luke nodded to Tear. "This wasn't what she meant to happen." This wasn't what they had meant, he pleaded for them to understand that even though he accepted that good intentions or bad, it had happened and was therefore his responsibility. "I hid the catalysts where no human could get to them so that side's fine, but I need to make it so the hymns don't mean anything anymore. You can still remember them, but they won't have any effect from now on, either the individual hymns or the Grand one."

"Wait, you hid the catalyst weapons?" Anise looked put out. Those were treasures of the order. "Wait, they managed to steal the catalyst weapons? We had them in the vault with the fonstone pieces!" She looked from Tear to Asch, the three of them wondering who had been able to get in there without sounding alarms.

Luke was glad she wasn't looking at him: he hadn't been around at the time so he had no idea.

As Luke calmed down Florian was the first to yawn this time, coming out from behind the altar. Jade and Anise looked over to him almost in unison, noting that it was strange that he was that tired. "You okay, Florian?" Anise beckoned him over to her and despite the fact they looked about the same age it was very clear even to Luke that to Florian, Anise was Mommy.

"Florian Tatlin, what have I told you about using Daathic fonic artes?" Luke had never received a scolding from his father, but if either of his parents had ever scolded him he would have recognized the tone Jade took now and been really creeped out.

"That I'll die and I'll deserve it and Anise will be really mad at me for being an idiot and reminding her of Ion?" Florian first got Jade's nod that he'd remembered it correctly before claiming that, "I didn't use them, though!" He yawned again.

"Then why are you so tired?"

"That's my fault." Luke did pick up that it was odd for Jade to be so clear about it. Luke had never heard of the Socratic method, but Jade was teaching and Jade had told Luke long ago that he hated to teach. "I'm tired, and he and Asch are picking up on it." Asch, without being prompted, steadied Luke. Luke leaned against him without making any sort of issue of it, knowing Asch wanted it that way for some reason. For Asch to just help him out naturally? Luke could get used to that. "Asch, don't call on my siblings for awhile, okay? Not even regular fonic artes. You're lucky it wasn't Shadow. Shadow is really cranky when they get woken up for nothing."

"Is there going to be any more excitement?" Jade asked, having pulled a medical instrument from a hidden pocket and checked over Florian to his satisfaction. "Because before you decided to finally start keeping your promises we were in the middle of something here."

"Oh, my wedding!" Natalia had gotten utterly sidetracked conferring with the royal fonists after her last contribution to the conversation. It was so very like Natalia to think of her subjects first and the 'most important day of a woman's life' second. She looked over at Peony, who shrugged.

"I brought my rappigs and rappig handler. If you want to postpone it we can postpone it. I'm not in any hurry to get back to Grand Chokmah." This was a lot more interesting. Or that was what his tone claimed. You would have to be an idiot to think that Peony's façade was all there was to the Malkuth Emperor, especially since he regularly one-upped Jade, of all people.

"Uh…" Luke tried to think. "The group that wanted a new score might not all have been there, but you'd think their leaders would have been, since it was so important. Of course, I missed the last few years, so you guys would know more about what could go wrong than I do. I mean, I didn't know Tear would sing the Grand Fonic Hymn. It's outdated."

"We're going to have to cancel that portion." Anise gently detached Florian and went over to the altar. "That should make up the lost time. Jade, where was I?"

"The thinly veiled threats portion."

"_Which_ thinly veiled threats portion?"

"Honestly, Anise, you'd think after all these years you'd have gotten a long enough attention span to keep track of your own sermons…" Jade followed her to the Altar as Florian decided to use the pad he had been kneeling on as a pillow.

"Master!" Luke turned around to find Mieu at eye level.

"Hey, Thing!" He hugged him, letting the little guy steady him instead of Asch for a moment. "I thought you weren't here!"

"He was resting up for his part of the ceremony," Guy explained. "He is a sacred cheagle, you know."

"I know, Guy." Although once he hadn't.

"I'm so happy you're back, Master!"

Luke grinned. "Me too." Mieu didn't seem to mind supporting Luke's weight, but then he'd been able to carry him in full gear. Not for long, though. Luke kept an eye on the remaining power in the ring as people started filing back into the hall.

"Excuse me." Luke looked up to see Jade. "Would it be too much to ask that you get out of Natalia's way? Oh, and an unconscious ringbearer isn't much use."

"I'm not asleep," Florian protested, yawning mid-word.

"Okay, Peony, how do you say, 'stop smuggling and pay the tithes or we'll start blowing up ships again' in priestly talk in under fifteen minutes?" Anise seemed to have started conferring with the royals on the sermon revising.

Luke was at the point where he'd be falling over if it weren't for the flying thing and the hand on his shoulder. "I'll use hyperresonance to get back to bed. Once I'm asleep Florian and Asch should be fine."

"Will you be okay?" Tear asked. She seemed to feel that this was her fault, even though there was no way she could have known what the Grand Fonic Hymn would do.

"I'll be fine, Tear. Even if I lose the body I used a memory circle: unless something as drastic as the score-breaking happens again I can get it back."

"I'll keep an eye on him," Guy promised.

"Thanks, Guy." Tear beat him to the punch but still didn't look satisfied. Tear couldn't leave, she was the maid of honor, but Guy wasn't any sort of fonist. Jade was highly skilled but he wasn't a seventh fonist and he was best man. Florian? Of course not. "Asch, do you think it's a good idea for you to go with him?"

It took Luke a minute that Tear hadn't arrived at Asch by process of eliminating unsuitable candidates. She'd been hesitating to ask him for some other reason, possibly the wedding's security. Tear trusted that Asch would both help Luke and be willing to help him. Tear, who had been the one to stay by Luke's side while he was unconscious even though her mission was to kill her brother and Asch had gone looking for information on Van, was willing to let Asch guard Luke in her place.

Luke just had to smile, and he had to watch it: Florian was not a mood ring but if Luke kept resonating like this he might as well be. They'd been working together as god-generals all this time. Of course they'd ironed out their differences, Anise wouldn't tolerate Asch's old attitude anymore.

He'd always wanted Asch to be their friend. Maybe it had been worth taking awhile to come back if this was what he had come home to. There had to have been problems, and huge ones given how messed up Asch had been, but they were a team now, and one that included Luke.

He felt like he'd come home. He'd never felt like that before until just before he'd become one again.

"I would have suggested it even if you hadn't," Asch agreed. "If I can be mistaken for him by the others than I need to find out how that works. It took him to fix my last mistake, and I'd prefer to avoid that. I still have a large amount of access to his power and can read his status, which might be useful. I think I had better stick close to him, for all our sakes."

"Would I be a third wheel?" Guy asked, scratching the back of his head. "I mean, I'm a good swordsman, but…"

"You're not a seventh fonist and you've built up an immunity, so you should be as resistant as anyone can be to Luke's tiresome nature." Jade again. "I don't want to trust House Fabre security alone with this." With a Lorelei about to fall asleep on his feet while potential threats of that magnitude were waiting in the wings. "Even if the original group is wiped out, it's almost certain that others who want a return to the security of the score will try to make use of him."

"I'll be fine once I get everything straightened out," Luke assured him.

Jade was clearly amused by the idea of Luke making anything nice and neat. "Mieu, it looks like we're going to be cutting your portion of the ceremony since Tear isn't singing the hymn. Why don't you go with your master?"

"Of course!" Mieu's ears flared with excitement.

The sorcerer's ring and Mieu's small size could make him quite useful. He would likely be able to escape and warn the rest of them if something happened. Not to mention that Luke was glad to see him. So the gang was all here.

"Should I use hyperresonance to get all of us over to my room? It's a bit showy, but a lot less than walking through a crowd that wants answers."

"Good idea." Doubly so because Jade wanted to see that in action.

"Ready, guys?" And Guy.

Asch nodded.

"Ready!" Mieu piped up.

"Ready when you are."

"Okay." Luke made a show of focusing to give them an instant's more warning, although he realized afterward that it might not be a good idea to let Jade think he needed the time (or was being a show-off), before they appeared in his room. Luke, specifically, appeared on the bed. Under the covers. It was where he had left from, after all. Mieu took his usual position, although this time Luke hadn't wordlessly left that side of the pillow for _him_. "Hey, move over so Asch has room." He wasn't sure what to do about the 'Thing' thing. Names had significance for cheagles, and Mieu had kept careful track of how many times in a day Luke called him Thing for a reason. It would hurt his feelings a bit if Luke didn't call him that. On the other hand, Tear wouldn't be happy if she thought he was insulting the little guy. He'd worry about it in the morning, along with the other name problem.

Asch sat down on the floor, leaning against the bed, instead. "I'll stay here. After you went to sleep last time I wasn't as tired. I should be able to keep watch."

"If you say so." Since there wasn't anything else needing attention, Luke drifted out of the body and into the normal state of a sentience, adjusting fonon flows and keeping the world turning. The sort of thing that Lorelei existed for and that Luke was a dangerous distraction from.

It was something that didn't compare to anything in Luke's life. Sometimes his mother had looked like she felt this while embroidering, and there was a kind of drowsy contentment in waking up before he had to in the mornings and just lying there, all warm and cozy. He'd missed this in the core, only able to barely keep things from falling apart when he should have been keeping perfect harmony. The dissonances were like itches that he had to scratch, like monster blood that got on his skin and stung until it was scrubbed off. It was such a relief when they found a place to stop by a stream or could at least have Jade use Splash to fill some buckets. Although this was more like the baths at Keterberg. Warm, the knotted-up and tense parts of his body (his self, the seventh fonon) relaxing, feeling right.

He could lose track of time like this, and he had. The others really didn't care all that much about what the humans were up to, satisfied by their true purpose and its timelessness. Shadow in particular hated to be pulled out of this state. No wonder they'd let the baby dream so long without waking him up. They'd though he would wake up on his own time, when he'd developed enough he was ready to learn about the things his fonon interacted with.

Instead he'd been woken up by a human.

And they wondered why he was so attached to them. It was the same reason Rem asked how high on the way up when Sylph and Ifrit said jump. Metaphorically speaking, of course.

This time, he unconsciously kept tabs on Asch as well as his own personal body. It wasn't that Asch was in danger or that he thought he was going to mess up like that again, just that he cared, and that meant being worried.

Asch felt Luke drift off, or out, and he also felt the 'hand' that Luke kept in touch with him via. Between Luke's greater exhaustion (he'd said that a confrontation with a sibling could tire him out even at full power) and that deeper resonance he felt like he hadn't slept in far longer than was healthy. His body, which he'd trained to shut up and endure hardship, was craving his nice warm bed, right there for the taking, with a yearning normally reserved for sushi in the middle of the desert when they'd run out of everything but bread, rice, and what could be stripped from the monsters.

"Are you okay? You look pretty beat." Guy was leaning against a wall, a vantage point where it was easy to see out but relatively hard to be seen. Of course, Guy had been in and out of this room during the tenure of both Lukes (or all three): he knew his way around.

"He's keeping an eye on me and that's making the resonance more intense."

"Resonance? That's when you're in tune with the seventh fonon and it empowers you, right? And hyperresonance is when two people with it also empower each other, so it doubles the effect?"

"Right." Asch nodded. "Only the seventh fonon will let fonists share it like that." The seventh fonon was altogether the most user-friendly, even if few could use it. It lent itself to healing spells, it could be used to call on the other fonons for offense but there weren't actually any seventh fonon combat artes per se, even though it could be very, very devastating. Now that he remembered Luke's feelings about having to kill people he understood why. It wasn't weakness, it was just that he hated seeing people suffer. Luke cared. It seemed like the others didn't, at least not compared to Luke. Luke just hadn't known how to show it, as Luke. "And dual hyperresonance is when two resonances… Hmm."

"What is it?"

"If I was able to use hyperresonance because of Luke's presence even after most of him was removed, then why was he able to?"

"He said he heard voices sometimes that weren't you, remember?"

Asch nodded: he remembered both what they'd told him and what Luke remembered. "Luke and Lorelei were separate manifestations at that point. That might have something to do with how Luke was able to circumvent the score. Lorelei alone couldn't do it, but if having a separate consciousness gave it not only an agent but a power increase… not only that, an agent who wasn't bound by the Pact because he didn't know he was."

"I don't know." Guy shook his head. "My family kept watch on the Albertesque seals, remember? I might not be a fonist and I was pretty young when Hod was destroyed, but I do know that doesn't add up. If you were able to use hyperresonance just because you were connected to Luke, then the two of you being connected wouldn't cause dual hyperresonance, just the regular kind. In my family, we didn't just have to learn Ancient Ispanian, but an older language because a lot of stuff for the seals was in it. Luke fon Fabre means light of the sacred flame now, but in that language Fabre doesn't mean flame, it means smith. Flame was a word that sounded a lot alike, though."

"Light of the sacred smith?"

"More like Creator's Light." Guy shrugged. "You should probably talk with Jade about that. We should have compared notes ages ago, huh." But they hadn't wanted to talk about Luke, not like that. Like a subject, like a curiosity, like an experiment when he'd fought so hard not to be one.

"He created me." Asch's tone was almost dreaming. "He said that he was inside me, that the real Luke had been both of us."

"If one hyperresonance was you and Lorelei, and the other Luke and Lorelei, it still doesn't add up."

"Or myself and the fragments of Luke, the embers, and the other Michael and Lorelei."

"Michael?"

"That was his name when he knew Yulia. He was thinking of using it, that it might be less confusing."

Guy grimaced a bit, not knowing what to think about that. Luke talking about whether or not he had a right to be called Luke was always something that had to be nipped in the bud in the old days. Still, if Michael was a real name and it wasn't an inferiority complex thing then it was up to Luke. The name did have a lot of baggage attached. Michael, Michael, what did that name mean? He knew he'd heard it before. Anyway, "So you do have some of his power as well as his frequency? And memories, too now."

Asch nodded blindly, having let his eyes slip closed at some point. "I rubbed off on him as well. I don't know if it was just the frequency that made Sylph confuse us. I sometimes feel like I'm missing an arm where he's concerned. At first it was that he had my life, my name. I thought that was what I missed even though if that was what I'd really wanted I could have simply gone home and had him put down instead of saying that was what I 'should' do. I think maybe part of the reason I didn't come home was that he would have been tossed out, or killed, if that had happened, especially before he learned to speak. Then I thought he had Van's love and that was the reason he'd never cared for me even though… Luke got his foolishness from me, it's hypocrisy to claim otherwise. After I died I thought it was this body missing its rightful soul. Now I wonder if it's because we were one once. We were Luke once, and Luke had you, and Natalia, and even if Father wasn't truly caring and Mother was sick and Uncle knew we were doomed and was intending for Natalia to marry us," strange how us seemed so natural, "and have a heir before we died as a weapon of Kimlasca so that she could be a Queen Regnant instead of some noble who would live marrying her and becoming king, even if… Ignorance is bliss."

"You want to go back to the good old days. Like when I wasn't secretly out to kill your father, it looked like you and Natalia would be perfect for each other, and everything was simple. Yeah, I know how you feel." Guy had lost everything, not thrown it away like Asch had.

"It feels as though if I regained him, the part that was pulled out of me when Van created that replica then I'll be whole and everything would be perfect. But that was what I thought happened when I died and took control of Luke's body. I want to be complete, and that was why I started insisting that he was me instead of a fake towards the end… I was utterly insane. I knew I was dying but Dist hadn't enlightened me about the Big Bang effect. I thought that he was finally stealing the last of my life. I claimed the name Luke fon Fabre right before I died. And then I didn't when I came back to life, even though I thought I had the right to. It just wasn't right to steal from someone who had nothing. Everything he had was mine, and I thought he was a thief. But all that meant was that he didn't have anything that was his."

"We kept expecting him to suddenly turn into you one day. And then when that happens we're heartbroken. I guess the grass really is always greener on the other side."

"He, he'd built himself up from nothing. If I hadn't had his memories of how to do that, known it was possible, then not even you could have saved me."

"There's nothing like a good fight to make people figure out that they really don't want to die." Guy's eyes were as unseeing as Asch's now, far away from here. "You took his life. Like hell I was going to let you throw it away like that."

"He actually said something like that to me when he first called out. That he hadn't given me his life so I could lose it. And I nearly did."

"Good thing Natalia let me know you might need someone to get drunk with. Don't worry, I never told her." That after she'd forced Asch to confront the fact he wasn't either Luke Asch had wandered off and started thinking about whether the dregs, the ashes, the ashes that had smothered the flame and doused the light had any right to keep shattering people's hopes and dreams like Tear's when she'd understood that Luke was gone and Natalia's when she'd seen his distance day after day and understood also that Luke was gone and he couldn't be Luke, the Luke that had loved her.

He could only be a coward, a breaker of the hearts of those he loved, a murderer.

And Guy had made him realize what Luke had after Akzeriuth. He couldn't make up for the past, but he couldn't abandon the responsibility to it. The responsibility to live for the purpose of making up for it, even if he never could. He couldn't go back and erase the words that had stabbed Luke through the heart, shattered a child's fragile world built on denial of the fact he was unloved and unknown by those he loved, made him think he was unlovable (how it had felt for his own self to despise him!), threatened to hurt his friends when Luke had shown he cared for Asch because Asch wanted to hate someone who didn't deserve it just so Asch could feel better about himself…

"No wonder Sylph thinks we're bad for him." Humans. "A replica world. If they were all like Luke it might be worth it. I wonder if that was what Van thought? Although he was truly mad there, both despising originals and adoring replicas and despising Luke while adoring me." The latter was, in Asch's hindsight, far madder.

"Well, you've spent more time with them than I have. But they're kind of… once they got personalities instead of working with that programming. They're adults, but there's still a kid in there. Even the ones that got beaten pretty bad before the Tower of Rem. They didn't get why. It didn't make any sense why someone would want to hurt someone else. It reminded me of Luke, when he had to kill. That one time… Do you remember?"

"He couldn't stand to hurt them. Everything in him cried out against it. But it was the only way to protect you. He always hated being a burden, and if that was what it took to actually be of help to you…"

"And we didn't want to pressure him when he was working so hard, so we never gave him a goal or anything useful to do. It was all useless stuff that didn't mean anything. Of course he didn't care about it." Guy sat on the ledge now, kicking his legs. "I can't believe I fucked up like that. I kept expecting him to snap out of it. It really was all makework, stuff to jog his memory, stuff so that he wouldn't embarrass us until he got his memory back, stuff to help him turn into you and he couldn't do that. I want to go back in time and make me realize what Van was up to. It was so obvious! And I just didn't see it. I let all that happen to Luke right under my nose. Some friend I was."

"You were his best friend. When he heard through me that you were going to go back and wait for him… He was so happy, but it was something almost too good to be true. And I'd just told him that none of you would want to back to him and he'd agreed that I was right."

"You were such a bastard back then," Guy agreed, and it made Asch feel better than sugarcoating it would have. "I'd been wanting a chance to knock you around for how you treated him for awhile. Ended up making you eat dirt for how you treated yourself. Life's funny sometimes." Imagine, him saving his family's murderer's family from themselves.

"I want to protect him. Instead he's only been alive an hour and I've already gotten him in a fight with one of his real family."

"Hey, could have happened to anybody. You were just trying to help, right?"

"And Luke was just trying to help Akzeriuth." Asch snarled silently. "_Damn_ Van Grants. Damn him. He promised him that he could be a hero, that he could help people, that he could be free and come to live with his real father. Almost the exact same lie, only I had far less excuse to believe what he told me."

"It was that…" Sick, that was the word Guy couldn't find. Or didn't consider harsh enough.

"I remember. I remember what he felt, it's almost like I was not just there but him. Like it was my heart that broke when he called me 'foolish replica Luke' and the city died because of me and my friends blamed me…"

"We all blamed him. Except for Ion. Of course, he understood better than the rest of us, huh." It looked like the water Luke had asked for had been delivered at some point. Guy clearly wished it was something stronger. "We didn't want the guilt. Tossed all of it on a poor kid… Do you know how proud of him I am? Selfless idiot. I just wanted it to be just heroism and none of the belief that he didn't have a right to exist." Guy put down the glass he held before he threw it against a wall.

"We treated him like that and Sylph chose to grind Baticul into dust in the very instant for his sake. I wonder when he'll realize that and go back home? No, he won't." Asch wished he wasn't happy about that. Such a selfish happiness. "He feels incomplete without me the same way I do him. He left fragments of his self, or a self, in me. Or something. I don't understand it," he confessed. "How he can care for someone who treated him like I did."

"Don't we all wish we understood Luke." Picking up the glass again, Guy toasted the content figure. "Once the wedding's over Jade'll come by to get inside his head." Jade was good at figuring out people besides himself. It came with thinking so differently from everyone else. Once he decided to start caring about the inferior thought processes of the fools he was surrounded by he was very good at taking them apart. It was, he claimed, due to the outside perspective a monster like him had.

Of course, the people best at getting in Jade's head were Peony and Anise, who were frankly terrible at dealing with most people too. Peony could be blamed on the two of them growing up together in, "Keterberg. That's where we're all going for the honeymoon."

"And it's on the same continent as the planetary art glyph."

Oh, of course Asch would have already thought of that. Jade, too. "So we're heading over there?"

"I can't imagine why we wouldn't."

"Well, security. From the other people that still want a score that Jade mentioned." Guy was the least involved with the Order of the group, being tied up handling Malkuth/Kimlasca diplomacy, plus the fontech revolution. Of course they all met up, but they all had their own jobs to do. Natalia had a kingdom to run since her father had fallen afoul of a slow poison that had only been detected after it had done enough damage for another, not so easily cured problem to set in, Anise had the Order, Jade handled the Malkuth-Order leg, Asch connected Kimlasca and the Order, and Tear was effectively in charge of Yulia City since her grandfather really didn't know how to do much but watch and was adrift in a world without the score.

Now Luke had shown up, Guy expected another rearrangement of everyone's lives to occur. Luke did stuff like that. It seemed a lot more amazing in retrospect than it had at the time, how the amnesiac shut-in had ended up in charge of a group like them and even regained that control so quickly after the disaster. Maybe, like they'd wondered once, it had been the Score that brought them together. There was a lot that didn't explain.

Guy had come after Luke to get the kid back home where it was safe. He should have been surprised to find him, not in his element, but handling something so foreign so well under the circumstances. Maybe it was old habits from when Luke had been Asch that had made him follow, but Asch had always given the sense that he knew what he was doing. Luke tried to protect that, but he'd been figuring it out as he went along and he was good at it.

By the time they got back to Baticul it had seemed the most natural thing in the world for the king, who was the one who had ordered Luke imprisoned like that, to put him in charge of a diplomatic mission that important. Sure, Luke wasn't good at diplomacy, but he could learn given the chance and this was that chance. Guy had been disappointed by Luke acting like typical Luke instead of growing during the trip there, and now he knew who to blame that on. Van Grants.

The king hadn't seen Luke in action. He hadn't sent him there to give him a chance to grow but sent him to die. Maybe that 'happy' life of Luke's had been something the king did so that he'd feel less guilty. Who knew. Or to keep Kimlasca's weapon from being stolen again, to keep Natalia from growing too attached to him.

Guy had been following along because he was Luke's friend and it was time he acted like it, plus he was proud of the kid. The others hadn't thought it through until a lot later. Anise's reason had been Ion, and the fact that the girl was a follower, not a leader. She was choosy about who she let give her orders, but if she made a promise she'd keep it, even to Mohs. Anise was ruling the Order with an iron Tokunaga because she was doing it for Ion. That girl was scary when she had a mission.

She'd finally had the honesty to confess that the reason she'd been so harsh on Luke was that she hated herself for being a traitor and had been taking it out on him last year. After Jade had essentially forced it out of her by shamelessly admitting that Luke had been the reason he'd started understanding feelings, death, all the things that had escaped him as a child. He'd watched Luke try to become human and felt responsible, even if he'd rejected that responsibility so harshly and so often because he truly didn't want it.

Natalia meeting Asch had finally made her realize that there was a Luke, and she'd ended up, like Guy, following with amazement that this was the person she'd thought she knew.

Tear, though… Wait, Tear. "Asch, about Tear… Asch?"

Without someone talking to him Asch had fallen asleep.

Guy was reminded of Luke, who had often fallen asleep sitting up in the second year after he arrived. He smiled, but then the smile dimmed when he realized why Luke had stopped doing that. There wasn't much point in reading or practicing his writing all night when all it got him was, "Oh, I guess that's a little bit better, but it's still nowhere near where you used to be. Keep studying." He had, and that was all the reaction he'd ever gotten until he gave up.

Hindsight made them all look so stupid, he thought for the umpteenth time as he shook Asch's shoulder a bit before judging that, god-general or no, it was probably safe to move him without waking him up first. Normally he would wake up at any sign of a possible attack so Guy wouldn't dare manhandle him unless he wanted to be stabbed in the guy by reflex, but the guy was sleeping like a rock. Heavy as one, too. He debated changing him. After all, he'd been their manservant and that included helping get armor off and ridiculously complicated court clothes on. It wasn't like Asch had anything he hadn't seen before, and Guy's time as a servant had given him sympathy for the maids who would be stuck fixing up these sheets.

He compromised by removing the boots and armor but leaving him in the underarmor padding. Asch needed to wash it, but it was better than nothing. Pere wouldn't let him hear the end of it if he found out Guy had been doing servant-type stuff again. Taking care of Peony's rappigs was different, supposedly, not that Guy really understood how. It might be lingering resentment of the family, although of course Luke had been Luke from the moment he came and spent hours looking at Pere's flowerbeds, the only living things, the only piece of the outdoors in a house he couldn't leave. The same way they were trapped here by vengeance, also wearing false identities.

Thinking about it, Guy realized that he would be a lot more startled by finding out that someone was secretly Lorelei if they weren't Luke. It explained a lot, actually, although maybe it was partially that he'd already known about the perfect isofone thing. So Luke could act like that because he was connected to Lorelei, even though Asch was supposedly the 'natural' isofone of Lorelei and didn't act that way.

He was more into fontech engineering than theory, but you couldn't build the machines without understanding the fonons. Maybe that was why he'd had the clearest head during Sylph's attack. He flew the Albiores. He knew Sylph, and not just in the way Jade did from using spells to attack. There was a lot more to all the fonons than just military applications and Jade's mad doctoring.

Storms came up suddenly. You dealt with them. Although that part was being a pilot more than an engineer. Getting Sylph to back down: now that was impressive. If he had to pick a fight with one of them it would be Ifrit. Not that there was a good choice, Ifrit was just the least bad by a long shot. The others were harder to make angry, which meant it would be harder to make them cool down, like Slyph hadn't backed down without a good reason to and would still keep an eye on Tear. Ifrit, though, was easily angered and if you did it right easily appeased.

The Albiore's shield was a seventh fonon application. Not to mention… The seventh fonon was what the majority of fontech relied on now. Everything being changed meant that a lot of the previous expectations of how many fonons of what sort would be available where and when went out the window. The seventh fonon was the rarest, and yet it, well, was helpful, and reliable, provided you didn't use up all the supply in the area like some idiots, and versatile. You couldn't use the third fonon to substitute for fire fonons, but if you used the seventh fonon to draw in fifth fonons then even if the local supply ran out the engine could then use seventh fonons until the fifth fonon replenished itself.

Thinking that fonons had personalities wasn't a weird thing like thinking ships had them. Of course the fonons had personalities. They had known that back before the Dawn Age. Still, maybe Guy should have done more than smile when interacting with it made him think of Luke instead of the Order's myths about Lorelei. If he'd mentioned that to Jade then maybe Jade would have made the connection. Or thought he was being sentimental. Jade worked with the fonons directly, he wouldn't understand the seventh fonon through them and it would have been an uphill battle to get him to learn enough about fontech to see the impact the sentiences' personalities had on it for himself.

The reason fontech had always been on the border of heretical might be Luke and the difference between the real Lorelei and the one in the myths. You couldn't see an august god calmly orchestrating the world and serenely sending men to their rightful fates in a fonon that vibrated so rapidly, that went so far in denying fate as raising the dead. A fonon that seemed unhappy, or concerned on a level that the others weren't. The seventh was the _least _serene fonon. Ginji compared it to a puppy. Treat it right and it would be loyal. The others didn't care unless you did something really stupid.

It had been worse before the end of the score, everyone agreed. Lorelei was confined no longer.

Or so they'd thought. No one had known that while Lorelei had been home Luke wasn't.

Luke was currently sprawled on his back, legs and arms taking up ¾ of the bed with Mieu using an arm as a pillow, the blankets kicked off. What a familiar sight that was. Asch slept more politely and compactly, although he seemed curled up a fourth of the way into a ball, back to Luke in a way that looked trusting by Asch's standards. Asch liked his back against a wall or the edge of the bed. Weird that he'd regard the people he was sharing a bed with as the most likely to try to stab him in the back in his sleep. No, not weird, sad.

Speaking of people Van had messed up, Tear's whole perfect soldier routine shielded a little girl who hadn't had stuffed animals because she wanted to grow up and have her brother be proud of her. Since Asch made Mieu sad he'd been sharing Tear's quarters since he was brought here. Tear needed something to cuddle, which was a lot of why that thing she and Luke had going. Tear wanted someone to cuddle, Luke needed cuddling. Only they were both adults and that meant cuddling had to be the sort of cuddling you don't want from a son or mother figure.

Now, Guy would volunteer to be cuddled by Tear if he could just hurry up and get over that phobia.

The problem was that Tear thought she was in love with Luke the same way Asch had thought he was in love with Natalia, and unless that was handled right it would end in tears. What with Mieu deserting her too, he might have to look into buying her a stuffed animal. He wasn't Dist and Tokunaga was creepy, but he could come up with something.

Tear, in her bed (the god generals had private rooms, what with secure documents and everything), in nightwear that would be less revealing than that swimsuit, sadly, looking all sweet and cudding something he'd made for her and thinking of him...

Guy noticed he was drooling and hurriedly wiped it off and took another drink to cool down. Yeah, he was lucky they hadn't noticed his fantasizing in the desert and gone after Luke instead. Damn phobia. He was okay in emergencies, and he could handle them standing closer than before, but if they grabbed him the way Mary had to protect him, if they were upset or even loud because they were excited… It was almost worse now that he remembered. He could picture whoever it was dying the way his sister and her maids had. He guessed he'd had a reason to suppress that memory.

He could force himself to hug someone but it would be kind of hard to go on dates when his body was screaming at him to get away unless he wanted her to die.

He also had a family line to continue, and he had hormones.

He needed someone to help him get over this. A friend, considerate: what were the odds he could catch Tear on the rebound?

The heirs of the guardians of the Yulian and Albertesque seals. If it weren't for the score being gone he would be worried that it was fated. He'd had enough of that when his home was destroyed, thank all of them.

It wasn't until he sipped at the water instead of gulping it down that he paused. Baticul water always had a distinctive taste thanks to the pipes it traveled through. The tang of iron wasn't unpleasant, they replaced the pipes when that happened, and it was probably as good for you as the city claimed. However, you could get sick of it, especially if you had tasted too much blood in your life, and the city had various methods for dealing with that, from adding wine to lemon juice. The fon Fabres added crushed mint leaves, which had the added bonus of making it taste cool even when it wasn't.

Grand Chokmah, which had been built around water instead of with water as an afterthought, kept its water tasteless by default because of the hazard that now had Guy looking for a panacea bottle. It had been awhile since he'd been to the manor, it might just be paranoia, but he'd been drinking the water here for years and something didn't seem right. If he was wrong, the bottle wouldn't activate, so no harm done. If he was right, they had a problem.

They had a problem.

He took out another bottle and tried to use it on Luke and Asch. Luke was fine. Asch wasn't. Not until the bottle activated, at least.

Someone in the von Fabre household was trying to poison Asch, the heir to the family. That was the least bad of the scenarios that flashed through his mind.

It was obviously a slow poison: with bottles the instant a poison was detected it became useless. They wouldn't think Guy suspected anything: he'd triggered the bottles from inside his pocket and no one should have a line of sight on him that he couldn't see. He knew this room's defenses. A manservant was half butler and half bodyguard. If he kept them thinking he was ignorant, if they remained under the impression that there was no one in this room (Luke had teleported them in and they hadn't made that much noise), then they should be as safe as it got here. He didn't want to rouse the alarm in a two-thirds deserted household which contained at least one and maybe more conspirators. Guy had checked and found the door locked when he arrived. A servant would have to go to Ramdas to get permission and the necessary key, which meant tracking down who had delivered and prepared the water later would be easy. Unless they were part of the extra staff brought in for the wedding, which they very well might be. Worst case scenario, the entire catering company was a fraud, in which case the family loyalists would actually be outnumbered.

Their best chance of catching them was pretending they were unaware until the ceremony was over, the two of them were awake, and they could get backup. Something else wasn't adding up, though.

Asch would have recognized that the taste was off if Guy had. And he hadn't been here since the catering staff moved in, he'd just signed the papers that Ramdas brought. So when had Asch gotten exposed?

The thought that sprung into Guy's mind a moment after a theory did was, 'You've got to be kidding me." The action that Guy sprang into was drawing his sword and, in a single motion, sweeping it under the bed. It didn't connect with anything, or anyone, and Guy let himself relax, chuckling, for the instant before a cloth-covered hand covered his mouth and he realized he couldn't see the hand, arm, anything.

Wasn't invisibility a Daathic fonic arte?

The hand that groped frantically for a panacea bottle was grabbed and forced to hold still as the gas on the cloth went to work.

His last thought was that if he was failing as a bodyguard at least it wasn't going to be because of something as ridiculous as an assassin hiding under the bed.


	3. Did

The part of him that was Luke, and human was shocked and horrified. The part of him that was Lorelei and still calm from the work he had woken up from was able to conceal most of that reaction.

Of course Van would have made a replica of himself. Of course he would have timed it so that the Big Bang would occur soon after his triumph, so that he would be able to say goodbye to his old body and be a replica in his replica world. Close enough that it had already been starting when he died, close enough that Van's self, not the poor replica's, looked out through those eyes.

Luke grasped on to that calm with both fists. He had to stay calm, he had to think. He couldn't let himself be overwhelmed by the memories and the betrayal. He closed his eyes, took a deep breath, reached out and reminded himself of who he was. He was not just a kid anymore.

There were two feelings at war within him, he realized as he let his eyes open and looked at him again. Luke's love for his sort-of father and the pain of the betrayal, the pain of having to kill him. Lorelei's love for Julia's children's child and the pain of the fate he had caused him to suffer.

They added up to a chaotic swamp of love, pain, and guilt that he couldn't afford. Van had chosen, it might have been what he was predicted to do but he'd been predicted to do it because it was what he would choose to do of his own free will.

No more excuses, Luke. Not for you, not for anyone.

It was easier to be Lorelei. Lorelei's pain was old and aching, Luke's was still new and raw. "Vandesdelca."

"Luke. Or should I say Lorelei." Van seemed impressed, almost approving. A student that had shown promise by defeating him, a worthy adversary. It was all a lie, and it was torment to offer a child what they starved for.

"We are the same, although I couldn't tell myself that or he would also have been bound by the pact and unable to destroy the score." He couldn't be Luke, Luke had too many old habits, bad ones.

"You, the planet's memory, claim you wanted to destroy the score?" Van found it insulting to be lied to like that? Van, the master liar himself felt he had a right to the truth he wanted to hear? Luke couldn't laugh at him, although that deserved to be laughed it.

"What Julia wanted, what I promised her, was a way to save Auldrant from the miasma certain to succeed. Certain. Despite anything anyone, including us, might try to do to stop it. When we realized what we had done, it was too late." That day, the day he'd thought he would save them and discovered he'd doomed them to war and so much suffering, "It was so very like Akzeriuth," he murmured, almost too quiet for Van to hear, lost in the memory. "I can't break a pact. Not outright. No matter how many prayers or screams or artes call for me." Century after century after century…

He found himself shivering, and forced himself to stop that. "Why did you bring me here, Vandesdelca?" He still had a hard time just calling him Van, he noted. "Surely you don't want to do that to Auldrant again." Surely not.

"I don't. You accomplished what I had set out to do, and when I found myself in this body everything suddenly…"

"Creating an isofone transfers most of the original's mind's seventh fonons. Of course you became more stable when you regained them." Though whether or not that was a good thing was up for debate. If Van was sane, then he could hope for the impossible. "Why am I here, then? And where is…" Asch, how could he let Van's presence make him forget about Asch? He whirled around the well-appointed room, finally finding Asch on the bed next to the one Luke still sat on. "Asch!"

He tried to reach out, and felt nothing but a sharp pain that made him gasp even though he was used to the pain of the headaches and it took something special to make him cry out. "Asch!"

"If you're trying to use resonance, don't bother. He's drugged and they used a perfectly calibrated fon slot seal. The one Largo used on Jade was calibrated for Ion. It only worked imperfectly and that let him accelerate the wearing off."

Asch… "They?" Luke made himself ask, needing to find a way to fix this, to help Asch.

"The group that wants a new score. They also used one on me, as well as a curse slot." A curse slot could drown someone in memories. Van's life… he'd wanted to create his vision of a future against everyone's will. A normal Van would hopefully abhor the idea of a score, even as a way to compel Lorelei. One under the influence of a curse slot would make a good pawn, theoretically. "They tried to use one on him, but it wouldn't take."

"Of course not," Luke murmured, abstracted as he went to Asch's side. "Not any more than a fon slot seal would work on me."

"You_ are_ a fon slot."

Luke nodded. "Do you know where we are?"

"Of course not. I haven't seen their faces but they aren't amateurs."

"I could get myself out of here, but if I can't use hyperresonance or even resonance with either of you then I can't bring you with me and I can't feel you so I couldn't find this place again." His voice was hovering a bit on the edge of song as he brushed his fingers along the shells of Asch's ears. Ears and mouth, the parts most associated with sound, were where the fon slots for his fonon were most concentrated.

"If you can get out of here then why are you still here?" Van seemed outraged.

"If I was going to abandon you to your fates I wouldn't have become Luke and suffered so much for such a small chance of changing them." But he wasn't Luke now, he'd buried himself in the peace attained by someone who had been faced with madness for so long, held out so long, that each pain was one more pain in a long line, holding on almost the only thing he could do. "You hurt me, Asch hurt me, but I deserved it. You have every right to hate me. It was my fault, after all. I won't stop trying to make things as right as I can. I decided that around two hundred years after I was imprisoned. I decided that when I woke up after being carried in Asch's mind. If I were to give up, then this world would end."

"You foolish…" But he wasn't a replica anymore: Asch was.

"And they used the catalyst weapons to ward this place while they still had them. I can't leave without awakening Shadow and letting Rem know what happened. Shadow will obliterate this place and a lot of the surrounding area and Rem will tell Sylph and Ifreet, and I'll be trapped in the fon belt while all knowledge of my fonon is wiped from the face of Auldrant to prevent the knowledge of Pacts becoming common again. Sheridan, Belkend, Daath, Yulia City, the poor children you created… I can't let that happen to them." Luke sighed. "Van, what are you lying about?"

"What do you mean?"

"You always lie, Van. You always twist people. You do it to yourself, to Asch, to me, to Tear, and you can't blame it on isofonic instability. I know you're trying to manipulate me, again, and I want to know how and," he stopped talking when his fingers jerked back, feeling burned, and by reflex he stuck them in his mouth before realizing that wouldn't have any effect on fifth fonon damage as opposed to that from touching a too-hot stewpot. Embarrassed a bit, he took them out and resumed, "And why."

Van laughed at Luke's slip. "When did you pick up that habit?"

"On the road. You never traveled with us, so I never got to cook for you." He didn't let himself be distracted from either his desire for the truth or trying to help Asch even though he gave in to the desire to tell Van what he had thrown away. "I was horrible at it at first but I was the best cook in our group by the end. And I got very good at shopping. When I was in Engave I had no idea that you had to pay for apples when you got them. My family always had a tab: Ramdas would send maids down to the grocer's all the time and then pay at the end of the month. And I learned about fonon fields and my body's fon slots very quickly," that was something Van should have taught him. "And I kept track of who had what capacity core and fon slot chambers, I carried the item stock, or most of it, because I was keeping track of it, and I got good enough at battle tactics that even Jade would say, "Oh very well," and do it despite disagreeing with the order. I wanted to tell you all about it when we met in Kaitzur, and then when I got home, and then on the trip to Akzeriuth, and then when I could go with you… But it was all a lie. You were the only one who saw me instead of just a shell they had to break through to find the _real_ Luke. And the only me you saw was 'foolish replica Luke.' I want to trust you, Master Van. I always wanted to. But you already used up all the trust you earned by scolding me and telling me the truth about how I was doing. I'm sorry." Although he wasn't sure who he was the most sorry for.

"Still calling me Master Van?"

"You were a deliberately bad teacher, but you were still my teacher, the only teacher I had. And you remind me of Julia a lot more than Tear does. You can act like someone who cares so well that we're all still in love with that person even though we know you're not him, Tear, Asch, and I." When he mentioned Asch's name he held his hand over his lips, feeling the nature of the fonons composing his breath. "Do you still want to kill me?"

Van's mouth started to open, to say, 'Why would I possibly want to,' or some other lie, but the silence of the person who sat before him, so very old, so very tired and worn yet determined and possessing, deep down, that flame that had impassioned Luke was almost sacred, and even with his fon slots sealed Van could tell that this was indeed Lorelei, the one he had imprisoned within him and never spoken to, the one who had found him when he was falling in the core instead of the other way around. The one who had let Van use him just as Luke had. "You're the planet's memory. As long as you exist there could be another score."

"I know," Lorelei agreed without hesitation. No one knew that better than him. "But without me there would be no healing spells, no healing fonons to be distilled and made into gels. Without me there would be no _words_, Vandesdelca, and no time. Without me there would be no knowledge and no minds other than those of my siblings. Just like Ifrit, just like Sylph and all the others, I am something whose presence and absence can both kill."

He could wake Asch up now, but Asch would probably attack Vandesdelca on sight, and he did love him, even though it was foolish. But what part of this wasn't foolish. "I should have let Sylph kill Tear. I should have let humanity be killed by the miasma. The universe isn't a place that rewards love all that well. For the universe's sake, I really shouldn't let myself care for people. But I do. I can't just let them be hurt. Guy, Natalia, Tear, Jade, Anise, Asch… I defeated myself, so I'll keep fighting." The mouth, where spells were spoken, was where the seal's power was the thickest. He would have to be careful. "Even if it means fighting the people I love. Even if it means killing you again."

He frowned. No: he wouldn't be able to trick the seals on the slots here with his fingertips. The fact he had Asch's same frequency meant he could cause the seals to think they were on him, and then when they transferred over they dispersed. Once he'd gotten the hang of this it wasn't stinging more than a little. This, though, was going to hurt. "Don't watch." He took a deep breath and quickly pressed his lips against Asch's. He hesitated, but pried Asch's mouth open with his tongue anyway and breathed in and out: he might as well get the ones in there since it was going to hurt like crazy anyway. One, two, he hummed, "Three" and pulled away as soon as it was done.

Asch couldn't move, and he didn't want Asch to choke on Luke's blood. Luke had a hard time avoiding that himself: getting the seals on Asch's tongue, mouth, throat, stomach and lungs all at once was maybe, he reflected, going a bit overboard. He had to tap out a quick pattern with his fingernails on the bed's headboard, since he couldn't speak and he wasn't up to doing a hymn in this body without some sort of sound to anchor it to.

When he was able to focus again there was blood everywhere, his body having spat and coughed it out to try to get rid of it so it could breathe. He took several deep breaths, trying to recover. It was only when he tried to go over to Asch to check that he realized Van was supporting him.

"What on Auldrant did you think you were doing?" Van, reading him the riot act because Luke had done something spectacularily stupid? He'd actually missed that.

"Getting rid of the fon slot seals on his mouth. And throat and lungs, while I was at it. I could trick the ones on his ears with my fingers, but there were too many there for that, and they were too tight." Luke coughed: he'd healed but he hadn't cleaned the blood away. He did that now. "The seals trying to work and then breaking apart damages my body. We have the same frequency, so if I do it right I can make them think I'm him even though I've only got seventh fonons. So no, I can't use this to get rid of the fon slot seal on you." He tried to push Van's arm away to go to Asch. "Let me go." That was an order.

"Why do you…" Care so much?

Van… "If you'd told me the truth, if you hadn't lied, I would have joined you. Same with Asch. We hated the score: it wanted us dead. We loved you. Tear would have too, probably, to avenge Hod and her parents. You lost because you lied to us, Vandesdelca. Did you think that if you told the truth, if you admitted that you were the one used to destroy Hod, that everyone would hate you?" Seeing Van's eyes, that was it, wasn't it. "And so you held me in contempt, told me I was foolish, because when you used me to destroy Akzeriuth _I was you _and you hated yourself. You wanted to blame the score, and yes, I deserve a lot of that blame, and then you wanted to be the one who would save Auldrant so you didn't have to care about the means and didn't deserve love already. You might not deserve it but you have it. Asch might have treated me like garbage and taken my life but I still would do this for him again if I had to, because it's my fault he's here and I care about him." Luke had to pause for breath now, and cleaned up the blood all over everything while he was at it. "This world is my responsibility. And Asch's, and yours, and Tear's and everyone's."

"And you have the power to take all that responsibility and all those choices away from them."

Luke hung his head, finally saying that, "I know. But there's nothing I can do about it but what I can." Van finally let go of him and he went to Asch's side, taking his right hand this time.

Then he froze.

"Julia…" her first song, nonsense unless you knew the code, the lullaby he'd made a spell for her. He should have kept his promise, to forget them so Tear didn't have to, but he'd delayed and delayed, forgetting Van also knew the Grand Fonic Hymn. "Julia," he whispered as tears fell and he clutched Asch's hand like a lifeline. He could feel himself falling away, falling into dreams of her, dark nightmares of how it had ended as he sobbed, "Julia, no…"

The second song, her promise of protection, and the sobs turned into sniffles. He smiled a bit, but only a bit. "Julia… Please stop, please," he begged Van while he had the clarity, while he was grounded.

The third song, the strength she gave everyone, let him turn to meet Van's eyes. He wondered what Van saw in his own. "Please, don't do this." He was able to walk towards him, but the surety and ability to break free of anything that was why this song called on Sylph through him crumbled when the fourth began and he was drowned in a sea of tears, the memory of her comfort, the way she had comforted him, told him it was her fault, hurting more than anything had yet because it _was_ his fault. He fell to his knees: Van caught him and when the fifth began, her passion, he had the strength to punch him but not the force to hit him again, hurt him enough to stop that song, her song. "I want to see her again!" and he was weak to demand something he couldn't have.

And then, and then the revelation, the truth, the light that destroyed everything, that began their suffering.

His song was next, but Van knew not to sing it. Like he'd known what the planetary arte really was. Like he'd known that Shadow and Rem's catalyst weapons would conceal this space from each other and the others.

Another lie, like blaming the god-generals' actions on Mohs.

And now, immersed in the pact, everything stripped away, he couldn't fight him. He just let Van hold him as he cried himself out, until there were no more tears to shed and he was drained dry.

"Those fools didn't know who they were dealing with. I knew that Lorelei could be summoned again, so I helped them do it so that I could intervene and create a pact that would prevent another score. Instead, you rescued yourself, although I didn't know that was you at the time. Dr. Michael Southern-Cross, genius designer of most of the fontech that let mankind survive the miasma. The man who was the _true _hero of the Dawn Ages, not Dr. Julia Grant. Now, that I wasn't expecting."

He didn't even have the will to shrug to dismiss the praise.

"Do you hate her? She was the one who did all of that to you."

Ordinarily he would have denied that forcefully, but all he could muster was a listless, "No."

Van actually seemed affectionate in his condecension. "Of course not." Luke, Lorelei, had always been foolish in that regard.

"What do you want?" His voice was still dead, because he hated this, hated this state, and right now he couldn't feel anything but the desire for it to stop. How didn't truly matter. The weight of the hymn and the history crushed him.

"What I've always wanted. A world free of the score. A replica world. The children of the seventh fonon are truly admirable. Even Sync killed solely because he wanted to live, and he was harder than Asch to control." To manipulate, to brainwash. "Except for the replica knights we pre-programmed, they wouldn't even fight back when the originals slaughtered them, not until it was too late. And the Tower of Rem. They chose to die for their brethren instead of fight, and you fought Asch to sacrifice yourself in his place." Van forced Luke's head up to look at him, and Luke wondered what he saw in empty gold eyes. "A replica world would never have another Hod."

Luke didn't have the will to argue.

"But there's an easier way, isn't there? Every seventh fonist in the world is Yulia's descendant. Except for the replicas. You gave her access to your power as a gift, and the replicas possess that gift as well. Wait long enough, and there will be that replica world, a world of seventh fonists without having to create another score to bring it about." And Van would rather wait than have anything to do with another score. "So all I have to do is prevent there from ever being another score. Of course, 'certain' and 'forever,' those are the words that forced you to create it, weren't they. Don't worry, Luke. I wanted you to die at Akzeriuth so that you wouldn't have to live with it like I did. I have no intention of repeating what my greatly admired," by fools who admired the Score, "ancestress did to you."

So what would he do? Luke didn't bother to ask, knowing Van would have to tell him what to do for the pact to take hold.

"Humanity. We did this to ourselves, and to you. The other fonons want you to stay safe and sound in the fon belt. You shouldn't be here where your innocence makes you vulnerable. You shouldn't put yourself in the reach of fools wanting another Score. Go home, Lorelei. To the fon belt, not the manor where you were held captive. Go there and stay there. Don't let anyone summon your presence here again, don't come down here yourself again. Let your fonic artes keep working, make sure everyone keeps their free will, but don't put yourself at risk by being here and don't let there be another Score. That is your part of the Pact."

And now Luke found himself a bit freer, just a bit, enough to say the price he wanted from Vandesdelca, his half of the pact. What did vengeance matter? "Tell them. Tell them why I can't come back, tell them that I love them, tell them not to try to summon me or I'll have to do whatever it takes to stop them. Make sure Asch gets home safely." What else? Did anything else matter? "Never tell anyone anything but the truth, the truth of your heart, ever again. No lies, no lies by omission, no manipulating."

"You just signed my death warrant," Van said wryly.

Luke knew he would care if he wasn't in this state. He'd care afterward, or maybe not. "Asch. I need to be able to speak to him." To be able to barely feel him, only in the sound of his breathing: he'd missed him so much before he could return here. Which he could never do again. "That counts as preventing myself from being summoned, right? Otherwise, he would try and try and I'd have to kill him." He didn't want that.

"You can have him, if he means that much to you," Van agreed.

"Thank you. That's enough, that's your part of the pact." If it weren't for this state he would try to bargain, he would try to twist words and deceive, but that had never been part of his nature and this spell made him so weak and clouded he would have no chance at tricking Van, of all people. He closed his eyes, the last words no more than whispers. The spell was draining the strength out of him more and more the longer it went on: when the last part was sung then his strength would return but at this point Van actually had to carry him over to the chest that hid the Key of Lorelei.

Luke hadn't even bothered to hope that he didn't have it.

Putting Luke down on the ground to open it Van asked, "Swear on it, and then I'll sing the seventh hymn."

"Swear on it?" Van had been right about everything up until now: that misstep took Luke aback. He wished he'd been able to think to say that yes, all it took was swearing. Then he could have sworn with his fingers crossed, waited until after Van had sung the final hymn, and then killed him. Or something.

"That's what it said, that the Key was how you gave proof that you would keep the pact."

"Vandesdelca," and now Lorelei was the one who spoke as if to a child. "It has the form of a sword for a reason. The Sword absorbs fonons: the Jewel disperses them. Combined, they will take me apart and put me back together in a form bound by the pact." That was the nice way of putting it. "You might want to hurry. This has taken longer than it should: too much longer and my fonons will drain below the amount needed for this to be a manifestation of my sentience. If that happens, I will disappear and the drain won't stop until either you give up on the pact and sing it anyway or every seventh fonon in existence is used up by your arte. Kill me, sing, and have done with it." The last part wanted to be a demand.

"Very well." He wasn't a god-general for nothing, the blow was swift and sure and as Luke died and was reborn he heard her song for him, their song singing out and restoring his strength as he left without a word.

He had nothing left to say to Van, the one who would seize glory, the one who had seized him, used him, for the last time now. If Van tried again his own pact would cause Lorelei to kill him.

It was over, and he went back to where he'd just been, and waited fitfully for Asch to wake up.


	4. I

Asch didn't wake up in his room at the side of his bed. He was in a bed: he almost expected that, since Guy had been there, but he knew his bed and this wasn't it.

His mouth tasted like his own blood. He played possum but finally, hearing no one, opened his eyes to find himself in a deserted high nobility guest room with his equipment at the foot of his bed along with a letter. A letter addressed to him and the others (strange that Luke's friends were 'the others' now) in a handwriting he recognized.

The door was open, the message that he was free to go. He scrambled to get prepared for battle: first things first, after all.

Then he read the letter.

Damn him!

_Luke!_

_Asch. I'm so sorry. _

_Why didn't you kill him on sight!_

_I wanted to find out what was going on, and he pretended he was a victim, and he told me that you had a fon slot seal… I know, I should have._ A too-long silence. _I'm sorry._

_You…_ That sorry didn't change anything, didn't do more than state the obvious. Of course Luke was sorrowful, so was Asch. Was dwelling on their mutual misery and self-blame going to improve anything? _At least we can still stay in touch. We'll find a way out of this._

Alarm resonated in him, dimly. _Asch, we can't. If you try I have to stop you no matter what. I don't have a choice, not any more than I did with the Score._ Luke didn't want to have to kill him. Luke didn't want to have to kill him, Luke was so desperately alone and longing to be able to be here with them and Luke's focus was on not wanting to hurt the one that had failed to guard him.

_Was he telling the truth about you forcing him to stop lying?_

_Yes. _

_Well, that's a victory._ He managed a smirk, although only a brief one. _And there's nothing protecting his miserable life? _

_No._

_Then he was right. This pact was his death warrant, the instant he forced you to sign it._ Asch found the Key of Lorelei next to his own sword and hefted it.

_He left it?_ Luke at first seemed to find that surprising and then appropriate. _Asch, you can use it to remove the rest of the fon slot seal. Touch the Jewel. _

Asch did as directed and found that the seal did in fact disperse from the fon slots in his hand. _Thank you._ He touched the back of his hand and what bare flesh he had to the Jewel and decided he would do the rest later.

_There's a bit of a loophole that isn't cheating._ Luke couldn't cheat: the Score had been a forecast as well as or perhaps more than a compulsion. The problem had been disrupting his forecast. This was a pact to do certain things, or to be precise prevent certain things. _I could speak to people through you, since we have the same frequency._ Although Luke didn't know if Asch would permit that. He certainly hadn't let Luke take control of Asch's body while Asch kept Luke's in a coma after Akzeriuth.

_Of course I'll let you say your goodbyes._

_Thank you. _

_I owe it to you._ He also owed Luke Van Grants' head on a platter. _Is there any way for a pact to be mutually withdrawn? If both of you were to agree to get rid of it?_

_If there was, the Score wouldn't have been valid. _

Asch should have realized that.

Luke was so worried, hovering, Asch his only window to the world and friends he loved. Like a kicked cheagle locked outside in the rain, nose up against the glass of a window. Asch had never seen such a sight (and neither had Luke, despite what the others said about his mistreatment of Mieu), but while he wasn't Tear he couldn't leave Luke like this. _Come here._ Luke let Asch pull him in this time, instead of being ambushed after fainting. Then, Asch had been keeping Luke at arm's length, doing it both to taunt him and to keep him divided enough between the two bodies to be unable to gain control of either of them, especially without any knowledge of how this worked. Now, he let Luke nestle into aching, empty places inside that seemed to have been waiting for his return.

Luke was so grateful. Although that didn't make the top three most heartbreaking things about this day. Or had it been more than a day?

He tucked away the letter, put on the Ultimatus, his usual sword now that he wasn't limited to standard issue, held on to the Key of Lorelei and strode out into the hall.

A country estate this close to Baticul should not be so completely deserted.

He had to get back to the city to report. This was expedited by a patrol of White Knights turning out to be one of several search parties looking for him under orders from the Kimlascan Empress. The title situation had been complicated, but Natalia was the Empress of Kimlasca, Peony was still the Emperor of Malkuth, and their heir would be the Emperor of Kimlasca and Malkuth, which came first most likely depending on which country's native was addressing him. All that nonsense had always bored Asch to tears.

Although what was forcing him to keep his composure was the mourning that resonated from Luke, the desire to touch as well as look out through Asch's eyes. He'd let him do that, take control. He'd let him do it often.

With all that was running through his head, perhaps Asch could be forgiven for being ambushed despite Luke's sudden feeling of distraction and cry of warning. His White Knight escort was quickly on the ground and he found himself staring down a woman in light green with a very large sword, another swordswoman in blue, and an archer and shield-carrying fonist both also wearing light green. The trio wearing the same color looked enough alike to be sisters.

_They're not sisters. They're Sylph. I wasn't the one who came up with the idea of having multiple manifestations. Undine used to have another, called Celsius, but there aren't polar ice caps anymore. _Luke was very, very worried. And he wasn't the one with the weapons pointed at him.

_So she would be Undine?_ Artwork usually depicted her in much less clothing. Both of them, actually. Or all four? He'd never heard of them depicted like this. Of course, he'd never heard of them showing up in person, not since before the Dawn Age. _Are the others waiting in the wings?_

_Efreet, yeah. He's never picked out a human form, so he won't show up unless they decide to stop being subtle._

_Taking out an entire patrol of White Knights isn't exactly going to go unnoticed. _

_They're not dead, just unconscious. _

"Ahem." It probably wasn't the best idea to ignore women that angry who had swords pressed to his throat. "Our little brother was _crying." _And there would be payback. "He's gotten himself suckered into some pact again and won't tell us the details. But apparently you know, so you will now tell _us_." Or else.

Asch could feel Luke trying to talk to them, which was greeted by a, "Shut up," from one of the other women in green, the fonist. "We let you spend two thousand years in the core, even when having three levels of atmosphere tripled our work and we had to separate out like this to keep up with it, last time. We're _not _going to stand by and let you be miserable and make the rest of us miserable again."

"Lorelei," the archer chimed in. "I know you care about them, and we're willing to try to keep the bodies to a minimum," a meaningful look was given to the fonist, "but we hate seeing you like this. Obviously a pact's a pact, but a little brother is a little brother." End of discussion.

"I have the letter the person who made the pact left, if I could reach into my pocket to get it." Not a good idea to make sudden moves when faced with soldiers of this competence with this sort of advantage, and that was dealing with 'mere' humans.

"Hand it over," the sword-Sylph ordered.

Undine took it, and handed it over to the archer, whose eyes flickered over it before tossing it back. "I'm Yutis," the archer introduced herself. "My other selves are Sephie, the swordswoman, and the fonist is Fairess. Undine's decided to go by Siren. Undine and I are coming with you. Fairess is going back to the fon belt because someone has to get the work done," and given that it seemed reasonably obvious that the tornado had been Fairess' doing Asch was quite happy that she would be making herself scarce, "And Sephie, who has seniority, will be working with Efreet, Gnome, and Rem to track Grabby down." Which was obviously a far more choice assignment than running the shop or dealing with humans.

Grabby? One who would seize glory. Vandesdelca. Not a bad nickname. _Luke?_

_Um… He should have watched his wording too. I had to go here and stay here, I can't let myself be summoned or go down there myself, I can't 'place myself at risk' by being here, and I can't let there be another Score. On the other hand, my fonic artes are allowed to stay working, I'm specifically prohibited from restricting anyone's free will, which means I can't stop you from planning things, and I can talk to you. _

_That means if someone gets you down here in a way that you can't prevent so you aren't 'letting' it happen and you aren't at risk then you can stay? _

_Well, risk levels can be tricky…_ Luke managed to convey fake innocence. _Sylph and Undine are sort of the family lawyers. Sylph's good with words but being the Heavenly Messenger means she can't stand lying. They can do it, but they hate it. Undine's always been slippery, though. Efreet kept getting himself caught up in ridiculous pacts_. It wasn't just Luke. _Slyph used to like people a lot more, but then the miasma happened._

While they were talking, the sword had been removed from Asch's neck and the swordswoman and fonist had blown away, turning from human to clumps of green fonons to those same fonons spread out enough to be indistinguishable from normal wind. Undine had flooded the ground and the water, if it was water, was causing the knights to come to.

_Why do Sylph's aspects have such distinct personalities? _

_The same way Lorelei and Luke did. We were separate and had different experiences, although we were the same person underneath, so when we merged back together I'm one now. Sylph's the same way, although she did the separate aspects thing less so that 'Luke' would be different from 'Lorelei' and more as a side effect of having such different responsibilities. Fairess was the air fonons in the core and caught up in the Planet Storm, the ones mostly used for fonic artes, Sephie's the regular atmosphere, and Yutis was the miasma. They had different jobs, so that made them act differently over time. Fairess was around me the most, and so she's the most determined not to let that happened again. If I hadn't made them promise… but by the Score, I had to. _He'd been forced not to go for help.

_Yutis was the miasma?_ He eyed her carefully as she stood there with utter confidence that the White Knights, who were looking to Asch for orders as they revived, wouldn't dream of attacking her. That confidence itself was what was keeping them from doing it, for now.

_Well,_ someone_ had to keep it separate. That's why she has arrows. Poisons and plague strike people down suddenly, without an enemy being close enough to kill to defend yourself. So arrows are an old symbol for that. Oh, Sephie says you should say that Yutis and Siren are other god-generals, which is true even if they're not part of the Order. _

_Your Order._

_I've been avoiding thinking about that part. _It was embarrassing. _They don't want people thinking they'll start showing up again. This is a special case, and if people keep trying to summon them then eventually they'll learn how to._

_I can understand that_.

After a brief 'explanation' from Asch, Yutis acted with impeccable formality. Every military organization had different types of salutes and other means of identifying members: Yutis might have been channeling Legretta. No White Knight who had dealt with Asch, Tear, or a high-ranking Oracle Knight while on duty wouldn't have fallen for it. "My apologies: we thought you might be disguised agents of Lord fon Fabre's kidnappers, since we had tracked him to a deserted Kimlascan manor that would have had a guard of your size, meaning exactly this amount of White Knight uniforms could have been stolen from it."

"That's understandable, General Yutis." Normally it wouldn't be, but this appeared to be a state of emergency. "Do you have any idea what happened to the guard detail there?"

"None, I'm afraid."

"What were Fon Master Anise and Empress Natalia's orders for me?" Asch asked.

"We have a flare that we can send up to request a pickup by airship. Or, if you think secrecy would be safer, we are instructed to help you sneak into the city undetected."

"What's the situation in the city? Is there some reason to believe we could be attacked while waiting for an airship?" He looked around at all of them.

"After yesterday's turmoil, the citizens are alarmed, and it's difficult to tell what is understandable and what might be attempts by saboteurs to cause trouble." That had been the wedding's problem all along, and this would just have exacerbated it. "Sir, is it true that Viscount Luke has returned?"

_Why are you surprised they want you back? You saved the world, Luke._ "That's a complicated matter that I need to debrief to their majesties and the Fon Master on." Which statement wasn't, as Asch intended and the knights' commander picked up on, a no.

"If I may, Senior General Asch," Undine, aka Siren spoke up, "Could I suggest a strategy?"

"Go ahead."

"It's highly likely that the ones responsible have taken refuge in the abandoned factory. The ink on that message indicates it was written no more than four hours ago, and while searches of carts and houses would certainly be rapidly accomplished by the White Knights the strange monsters resident in the factory require more elite forces that would take time to assemble, especially due to the high security necessary for their majesties. It would provide an excellent temporary refuge until a break in the web of searchers were to appear. Such a break, or at least a lower number of search parties, would occur as soon as you were found. If we were to send up that flare, dress one of them in your uniform, and give you the non-uniform gear we brought with us in case it was needed, then head to the exit of the factory and hide, we could lull them into a false sense of security."

"Make it look as though the search has died down in the area surrounding Baticul and tell their Majesties to send a party into the factory from Baticul to flush them out?" _She's good._

_Since her powers are the best counter to Efreet's she used to get summoned a lot by whoever was fighting the people who had summoned him. _

How many thousands of years of military experience did these two have?

"Not right away," Undine cautioned. "It's also possible that they're hiding in or heading towards the Baticul side to lose themselves in the crowd. If they don't leave from this side within a few hours of the flare, then I would suggest that we enter from this side to flush them out."

The knight saluted to apologize for arguing with such a high-ranking officer. "General Siren, Asch has been requsted to head to Baticul as soon as practical."

"The factory is a route to Baticul, is it not?"

"Are you suggesting that General Asch isn't capable of making it through the factory? Not to mention that I doubt there is a more discreet route into the city. Conducting a search would kill two birds with one stone." General Yutis' tone was disapproving instead of Siren's polite way of pointing out that the knight had failed to take something into account. The lower ranks should think things through before arguing with superior officers. "Your decision, General Asch?"

"One moment." _Luke, can you ask if they have some reason, besides logic of course, to think that Van's there? _

_They can't sense him. He actually did have a fon slot seal._ Both Luke and Asch were well aware of the extent of Van's dedication, but that was on the order of letting himself get imprisoned in Baticul. Of course, Luke had been responsible for him getting out of there that time as well. _But if Yutis gets close enough someone breathing that she can't reach the fon slots of is enough of a giveaway. Going through the factory should be a through enough sweep, even if it's a quick trip. She can't do it in a crowd or over a large area: there are too many people and monsters. But the factory's small enough and shouldn't have any other humans to confuse her. _

"Let's compromise," Asch suggested. "If they're worried about being found, then strange people entering the factory might flush them out, or at least rattle them. If we were to travel though rapidly, in disguise, doing a cursory sweep, then if we're captured en route their Majesties will know where the criminals are hiding, if they're not there we have a secure and secret route to Baticul, and if they are there and avoid us then the fact a search party was mobilized that rapidly could disrupt their plans, especially if we allow them to overhear that we're just a scouting group, perhaps marking a direct route to help future search parties avoid getting lost." That was one of the main hazards of the factory. Even if the rare strong monsters didn't appear, bounty hunting parties could be unable to find their way out until they ran out of supplies. "That gets us there faster than sitting in wait would."

The two exchanged a glance, and nodded.

"Do you have message paper?"

"Of course sir." The White Knight handed it over and Asch quickly scribbled a note. The part that took longest was figuring out what to put in. On the one hand, they need to know about Van. On the other, they'd go ballistic. And he also needed to let them know what variety of fake the god-generals Anise would be surprised to find she'd suddenly acquired were.

After Asch changed into his disguise (although the color, red-gold, could have been a bit less appropriate to Lorelei), a White Knight of Asch's size had been instructed on how to get into his, and the groups parted ways, it was time for some questions. Above all, "Is there any way to force either of you into a pact?"

Undine snorted. "Not now," Yutis answered. "We destroyed all the artifacts that could be used for it and texts describing how to do it long before the dawn age. The Catalysts could _perhaps_ be used on Rem and Shadow, but there's no accompanying fonic arte for them and they're not going to be foolish enough to create one. Not that Lorelei was really being foolish," this prompted another snort from Undine. "Oh, hush. We all created artes like that at least once, and he put better restrictions on his than any of us did. A single family line, only those from it who understood what they were doing, and only those that loved the world and him. _So _much better than random temple looters, sister dear."

"Van loved the world?" And Luke? Or Lorelei, at least? Asch's skepticism showed.

"Love." What could you do? "If I had a thunderstorm for every million humans who have been killed because of that emotion, I could have made the miasma Gnome's problem."

Were there even a million humans on Auldrant? In the fantastical Dawn Age, perhaps, but Asch couldn't imagine a world in which humans were as common as monsters.

"In any case, as Lorelei informed you, if Vandesdelca removes his second fon slot seal he will be able to detect him, and if he does not, then if I'm close enough and there aren't a mob of other humans around for him to be lost in then I can."

"Second fon slot seal?" Those things were incredibly expensive. Dorian General Grants did have a supply, though, and much of his equipment had never been recovered. That did explain it. Use one to try to deceive Luke, remove it to use the Grand Fonic Hymn when Luke's guard was down, and then activate another one. "Of course."

"Speaking of which, why is the one on you still mostly active?"

"I didn't want to take the time to use the Jewel while the White Knights were there. If they'd known about the seal it would have been much harder to carry out this plan."

"What does the Jewel have to do with it?"

"What do you mean?" Was there an obvious way to remove the seal that both he and Luke had missed?

It appeared so. "You do realize what the body you're using is, right?"

"Obviously not, Yutis." Undine had gotten quite far ahead while they talked. "They didn't understand that Luke was our brother. Of course he doesn't know what he's got. It's been how long since we manifested? Not to mention that their Order was working to wipe out the real truth. He'd have to be an idiot to not realize this back when we were walking around, but nowadays even that Jade you find so amusing missed something as 'obvious' as our little brother's nature."

"Oh, right. I am out of touch." Yutis seemed to find this embarrassing. "Asch, when you moved into Luke's body you brought your personal fonons in but nothing actually left. Lorelei's self is in all seventh fonons, he just stopped manifesting through those. You're a… is there a modern term?"

"I don't think so."

They were already at the abandoned factory's entrance?

_Sylph is very fast, and she's also good at not making people notice. _

_You haven't spoken up in awhile._ Was Luke doing well?

_I've been setting some things up. They asked me to explain this, since they don't really know enough about how people today view things. Sylph knows the language, since she conveys words, but there's a difference between what words mean and how they're heard. _Which Lorelei was better at. _You're still you, but you're in my body. The body of a fonon sentience. So it turns out I didn't have to do that to remove the seals. Do you want me to get rid of them now?_

_Please do._

Asch could feel his fon slots open up, and it was the same feeling as when a blindfold was removed. _Thank you._

_That worked a lot better. The base fonons in that body don't have the ability to feel pain_. What a relief!

_Feel pain? _

Luke was silent.

_You didn't have to do _what_ to remove the seals? _

_I transferred them to myself. It hurt, but I've had worse and I just healed it right away. _

Luke had been through a lot, Asch knew, so saying he'd 'had worse' left a lot of ground to cover.

Feeling Asch's reaction, Luke tried again. _It mostly just stung?_

_Mostly?_

_Asch…_ And now Luke was the one who wasn't happy. _It's not that I don't appreciate the thought, but it's getting on my nerves that everyone's being so overprotective. Yes, I know I got suckered into a pact. So what? It's not rare. In the old days no one would have had the time to show up in person for it. I've been in two bad pacts and Sylph's been in twenty, and she's the smart one who gets called on the second-least after me. It would have been great if they'd woken me up before Julia did so I had the benefit of their experience, but they didn't. It would have been great if you'd come home, taught me, protected me, and been my big brother when I was a baby and needed it, but you didn't. You're trying to make up for lost time, and guess what? That time is lost. I'm not a baby anymore, you missed your chance to baby me, so _stop it_. I'm not going to let your guilt tripping cause me to be constantly looked down on like this. _

That speech seemed to have been given to both parties, since Yutis and Undine paused.

_Van undid his fon slot seal almost a minute ago. He's in the Zao Ruins sephiroth. I have the ability to keep all of you out of there and him inside it, and that is how I'm going to handle this. _Like it or not._ Killing him, interrogating him, whatever, won't change the pact and you know it. I am the one he hurt, not any of you, so go home! I let you come because you said you wanted to help me, but taking this over is not helping, it's controlling, and I've had more than enough of that from him!_

Yutis, arms folded, seemed to be smiling with wry approval. Undine was as inscrutable as the still waters of a deep pond.

It was almost a shame to have to bring up a practical issue when something like this was going on. _Luke? How did Van get all the way there this quickly? _

_Hyperresonance. He unsealed his fon slots, I got a lock on him, I sent him there and sealed the doors behind him. I also unlocked the staff quarters. The food supplies, well, they were stale back then and they won't be any worse now. Emergency rations, stockpiled preserved foods, since the miasma was killing most of the crops._

_What was it like back then?_ In the semi-mythical Dawn Ages.

_I really don't know where to start. You aren't going to object to what I did with him? _

_Would you listen?_

_Listen, yes. _Talk about it, fine. Be ordered around, not fine. _Although I might not be so calm about this if I hadn't figured out another loophole. _The next part was, Asch could tell, directed at all involved. _I'm creating a place for my friends to stay when they visit me in the fon belt._

_Are you mad? The demigod, perhaps, but _humans_? _That was a new speaker. Asch would guess Efreet.

Although Asch's mind was mostly busy picturing Guy's reaction to this.

_Listen, you…_

"Well," Yutis tapped her belt thoughtfully. "If that's settled, I'm going to Keterberg. There's a casino giving out replicas of sacred weaponry, including my bow, as prizes. That might be fun."

"You're staying in the human realm?" Undine seemed carefully neutral, yet unsurprised.

"They're making great leaps without the Score's interference, and the last time they had a renaissance without us getting ourselves involved we ended up with the miasma and the Score. Avoiding being coerced into destroying continents or slavery is one thing. None of us want another Volt. But leaving them unsupervised clearly doesn't work any better than micromanaging did."

"Perhaps. The planetary arte's glyph requires watching."

"A job for Celsius?" Yutis guessed, smiling slightly. Then she frowned, looking at Luke through Asch. "Lorelei, there's a reason we separate ourselves into pieces for company. Getting attached to humans is like getting attached to rainclouds. They might be pretty, they might be useful, but they're not something you can rely upon and there _has_ to be a rainbow."

Luke didn't answer, just tightened, in some way, his hold on Asch. It wasn't confining, just that Luke didn't want to lose him, would hold on as long as he could. The feeling was returned.

Yutis shrugged, feeling that her advice had been given and that was the end of it. "Asch, you will receive a sign of our favor as soon as we come to a consensus."

_Say thank you, _Luke prodded him. _That's a big deal. _

"Thank you, your…" How did one address a fonon sentience?

"Your divinity. A short version of my title is Heavenly Messenger Yutis, Spirit of Wind." She waved at Undine. "She would be Maiden of Mist Undine, Spirit of Water. Efreet and Rem care about titles, and Fairess and Sephie aren't happy, so I'd be polite if I were human." Undine was already walking away, and Yutis waved once before following. They were out of sight in a step.


	5. Miss?

As soon as they were gone a certain sense of unreality permeated the memory of their presence. Asch had been through what he had, heard Lorelei's voice, had Luke's memories of fighting Van while he controlled some of Lorelei's power, and that still wasn't the same as the knowledge that what seemed like normal people were, well, the scientific term was fonon sentience but the old word, the ancient Ispanian word, was God.

Luke was one thing, but the idea of such ancient and powerful entities going to a casino was almost frightening in its very normalcy. Lorelei, the distant arbitrer of fate the Order had described, was less dangerous than a god who could, and would, appear on the street. By thinking of the fonon sentiences as inhuman beings that could care less about individual humans… It should have made them seem scary. But a god that did care, that would chastise individuals to their faces, who could be anyone on the street so you wouldn't know to flatter them…

Wise and indifferent faces in the fon belt were stories the Order told the people so they wouldn't be afraid.

Strange, that friendship and caring were more dangerous than contempt and indifference.

_Asch? _

_Yes?_

_Could you come here? I need someone to look it over. And, well, you're a lot sturdier than the others. _

_The place you were going to make for us?_

_Not just you, but… it's nice to have a home. _Asch could feel that Luke wanted to show it to him.

_I'd be honored. _The idea of being a visitor in Luke's home, a home that was Luke's alone, brought a wry smile to his face.

_I'll show you how to do more with our power, but I think I'd better bring you here this time. _Sensing Asch's assent, Luke pulled.

"I sent another letter," Luke told him when he arrived. The place for now was relatively simple, a circle of red-gold floor marked with a glyph that Asch suspected was the one that had appeared under Luke's feet during the last few moments of that life, the one Luke had stood on while Asch fell into his arms and Lorelei acknowledged him. Luke was lying down on a white couch with an incredible view. Asch joined him, because he didn't want to be standing even if 'down' was so far away as to be mostly academic. Luke would rescue him if he fell, certainly, but the solidity of the white leather and the warmth of Luke, who looked just as he had when Asch had seen him alive, anchored him.

Grinning as he moved over to make room, Luke confided that, "Since they're not going to be happy I'm letting him live, I think I'm going to wait until after the honeymoon to talk to them. Maybe that will mellow them out. It won't help Jade, though. Between his sister and Anise, he's going to have to be on his best behavior in Keterberg." Luke paused. "I should maybe mention that to Yutis. A lot of men get really cranky if they're not getting any, and Jade's scary as it is."

"How did you find out about that?" Asch asked, raising an eyebrow. It was a well-known phenomenon in the Oracle Knights, and had led to several concerted efforts to get Asch drunk and introduced to the pleasures of sex before his fourteenth year in hopes it would mellow him out. It wasn't only men: Legretta was one of the woman whose 'time of the month' was made far, far worse if she hadn't 'reported to' Van recently.

"A lot of knowledge has been lost since the Dawn Age." Luke blushed a bit. "And, no, I'm not answering the next question. Which kind of gives away that I'm a virgin anyway, huh." Due to his childish nature, the fon Fabre heir had been closely watched around the maids. He'd been even more thoroughly chaperoned on his journey, if anything.

"I wasn't going to pry." Asch had Luke's memories of celibacy. "Still, Jade and Yutis?"

"Sylph likes flings with clever bastards who make good sparring partners and won't get emotionally attached. I can't believe Jade and Anise. I mean, he was always complimenting her, a lot more than he complimented _anyone_, and she wins against him more than anyone but Peony, but that's even more weird than Natalia and Peony!"

Ah, gossip. But catching up on Luke's friends with him, telling him what he'd missed, was something that seemed so very right, enough to overturn his usual hatred of gossip. "They haven't. He's insisting on waiting until she's half his age. She insists that women mature faster than men. The rest of us do our best to stay out of earshot. If Anise were to win, everyone would know about it, and quickly. Anise would be smug and Jade is shameless."

"Same old Jade, even though Jade with a… An Anise." Luke laughed, and leaned against Asch's shoulder for support. "That's hilarious. Was it Florian?"

"Florian." Asch nodded. "Jade was, well, he's been focusing on replica health. He's finally become responsible, although he claims it's not responsibility but senility. Florian is one of the older replicas in existence, not to mention the replica of a Fon Master. On top of that, Anise hounded him into doing regular checkups." Florian was, in so many ways, their reminder of Ion. They all wanted him to have the life Ion should have had, in his memory. Luke had been Ion's friend, and Ion, although he'd been more reserved, had occasionally been kinder to Luke than even Guy.

But not even the seventh fonon could bring back those who died that way.

"It's nice." Luke held Asch now, outside as well as inside. Being physically together hadn't made Luke withdraw from Asch's mind and body. Not that Asch wanted him to go. That empty feeling: he hated it. Luke's memories had almost taunted him, because he'd seen that Luke had felt the same and if only he'd listened, if only he'd joined him, they could have been friends. They could have sated that hunger for the one who had been there for so long before being taken away.

Luke was talking about Jade, Anise and Florian's strange family, but also about being here when he continued, "Isn't it nice that they're building their own futures? Natalia was able to give up on her dream when she saw it was hurting you both and find someone to make her happy instead of you two being trapped in what had once seemed like a perfect destiny. Jade and Anise: it just seems wrong, but when I was there watching them they just _worked_. Guy's made it up a fifth as high as we are now, although the landing was a little rocky, and they've really only started on it recently because there are so many other exciting things happening in fontech. You and Tear are making the world, and the Oracle Knights, what you would have wanted them to be. I was happy when I found out about all of this. Even if I couldn't have found a way to see you in person, knowing that I'd beaten the Score, that I'd made it possible for you to live those lives, that would have been enough." That, and Asch.

Asch also wrapped his arms around Luke, looking down. He reached out, having learned by watching Luke how to resonate without causing horrible headaches. There was no need to speak silently here, so when Luke showed he didn't mind by stretching a bit, Asch felt his fonons as Luke did his, almost weaving in.

Human fon slots absorbed fonons: they couldn't project them outward except as artes, and they couldn't reach out as he did now. Perhaps this was one of the powers he had as the ashes of the sacred flame: not a god, but marked by one inside and out.

There were little eddies, disharmonies, points of tension that felt wrong and when he, after glancing at Luke for permission, soothed one Luke hummed with delight. Those must be the imbalances that made him easily exhausted which Luke had mentioned at the ceremony.

Luke's reaction, when Asch was able to do this with his eyes open (the concentration necessary quickly became second nature), could only be compared to something Asch himself had never actually seen.

The Keterberg Spa, which Peony had given Luke's group passes to, had a massage service. Guy had taken advantage of it after learning an arte and seeing the effect it had on him the others had gotten in line. Jade, amazingly, had been forced to yield to Natalia, and the noises his ex-fiancee had made and her rapturous expression had fueled a lot of Asch's fantasies.

It had also caused him to curse Luke for paying attention to Guy's efforts to look at women in swimsuits as much as manly possible without being touched by them, falling to the floor, and getting a concussion on the tile instead of focusing solely on the orgasmic Natalia. True, Luke would have been in trouble if she'd caught him staring, but it hadn't been like she'd been paying attention!

Luke almost giggled, and Asch knew Luke had been aware of what he was thinking. The connection went both ways, but Luke's thoughts were almost entirely about how good this felt, which Asch could guess from the way his back was arching. The ache wasn't in his actual back, but stretching it was a human habit that Luke retained, Lorelei or not.

"What do you think?" Luke asked, after Asch's help removed the largest few. Apparently this was tricky to do alone, like washing your own back, another reason to have a few aspects since normally that was the only way to get some help with this.

Asch could only do this for Luke because he had Luke's powers.

"What do you think about all of this?" Luke's attempt at clarifying didn't help that much. "About how it's turned out. Do you think it was, well, not worth it, but… do you think everyone will be happy?"

That was still a broad question, but it was one of the largest questions, so that was inevitable. "You can't make everyone happy. There are people who want the Score back even though if the Score still existed they'd have died years ago. As for us," 'us' was, of course, Luke's people, "we have regrets, but yes. I am happy, and I will be. Even before you came back, when I thought I was going to be alone for the rest of my life because no one, not even Natalia, could fill the void I realized too late you alone could fill I was happy. I had a few rough patches, but Guy made me realize I owed it to you to be happy, not to wallow in guilt and self-pity. He was right. You even want Van to be happy. Well, Guy once said that the best revenge is living well, and he should know."

That made Luke laugh again, and in Luke's life there had been too little carefree laughter. "Maybe Guy, Jade, Anise and the other side of my family will find a way to make it riskless for us to go down to Auldrant. And then you can ambush me and toss me down there and we could go to that spa. This feels better than that did, though. I like this place."

"Will this be all of it?"

"Of course not. I'll add rooms with visible walls later." Luke had wanted to see Asch as soon as he had built something survivable. "Anise would hate having to spend hours around this view, and Guy? We wouldn't be able to tear him away from it. I'll show you how to make your own room, and how to go back and forth. I have so much to teach you!"

At first Asch thought Luke's anticipation was because the shoe would be on the other foot now: Luke teaching instead of trying to be taught. Then he remembered Dr. Michael Southern-Cross, the genius inventor and so on, and realized that Luke wasn't looking forward to a new experience. No, he knew what teaching was like and he loved it.

"I…" Luke's mood swung. "The others. We get along, but we don't have anything in common except taking care of our own fonons. That's why they always used to make human friends, before what happened to one of Efreet's aspects. He doesn't have anything to do with lightning anymore, it's wind and light fonons now. And different aspects are nice, but in the end they're talking to yourself. You know how sometimes you have internal arguments when you really want to do something, but you know it's a bad idea, but you still really want to do it? Slyph's three selves weren't meant so much to have separate selves, they just ended up that way, because doing that for company isn't really enough. Humans contain six fonons, except for Yulia's descendants who have seven, and the replicas who only have mine, so they can be people that you have stuff in common with but aren't you. That was why all the pacts kept happening, long ago before I woke up. They knew better, but they were lonely. They could talk with humans, but humans don't understand what it's like to be a fonon sentience. That was why they created demigods, although most demigods were like Van and stole the power. They usually didn't turn out well. Either they went nuts when they got so much power all of a sudden and didn't know how to handle it, or they died and then it hurt more, that they'd had someone who understood them and then lost that person."

"I don't want to lose you either."

"I'm so lucky. You're unique. Maybe it was because I was separated from you. Although that wouldn't really work for the others, since stable replicas have to be seventh-fonon only." Luke hugged him tight. "Red-gold lining." It was horrible, but he had Asch, and Asch was wonderful.

"Maybe it's because of everything that we appreciate this so much."

"I… You can age and die normally, or you could stay this age forever, or you could change your mind at any time. I miss people, I want to see Julia again, but I'm meant to be nearly eternal. Humans often have trouble with living too long. Maybe you'll be fine, you might share enough of my nature, but if it gets to be too much don't stay here on my account. I don't want you to be miserable because of me." Luke looked off into the distance as he said this, not wanting to put any sort of pressure on Asch.

"Luke, we've got a century or so before that becomes a problem. Jade and Peony are old, but Jade already has Florian and Natalia's already arguing with Peony over names." Asch had been thinking about death for a long time now: his own, Luke's, their mother's, their uncle's.

"Yeah, I want to see what Jade and Anise's kids would be like." Grinning evilly, Luke revealed that, "Florian's a replica, so he'll mostly resist their influence, not that he wasn't a little devil sometimes in the first place. Do you remember when he stole a catalyst to get people to play tag?" Asch laughed. "Jade and Anise, though. Their kids are going to be holy terrors. Replicating their sisters' Tokunagas so they can… I can't wait to find out."

"I happen to work for Anise."

"You might want to start training some of your Oracle Knights for hazardous babysitting missions, then. Or would they insist on 'Uncle Asch?"

"Or Uncle Luke. You'll still be mentally closer to their age." He ran his hand through Luke's short yet soft hair. "I don't think I'll get tired of things like that. Frustrated enough to pull my hair out until it's shorter than yours, but not tired."

"I won't." Luke never would. He loved the world, he loved life, he loved people. He mourned the lost but loved the found. "So don't worry." _Even if you become one of those lost I'll be fine. After all, I spent seven years not even knowing you were out there. _

"I'm not the one worrying, Luke. Don't predict trouble. Please." The Score was, after all, nothing but Lorelei's best guesses.

"You're right. I have to avoid thinking too much about the future. My fonon is that of time as well as sound. If I slip up… Don't worry, I didn't think about it clearly enough to destine Jade and Anise to have kids just like them. Although that was considered a horrible curse back in the old days. They really would deserve it, huh."

"Oh, they would." Luke had attempted to command Anise. Asch had Anise as a boss who, at the beginning, had been not very fond of him. Not at all. Refusing to accept his resignation and bargaining with Natalia over who had what rights to what amount of his slave labor had been bad enough. Handing him over to Jade as a guinea pig and getting Natalia to agree for the sake of his health was far worse. Jade had always been comparing him to Luke… Oh, vengeance. Sweet revenge. "Luke, can you look at my memories?"

"Sure. What do you want to show me?"

"Jade complimenting you. Constantly." At Asch's expense, but Jade would still be embarrassed Luke had seen them second-hand.

"You're kidding."

"I wish I was. I only had your memories and it was still so very wrong."

"This I have to see."

-

Gah, as you can see I need a beta. Any volunteers? I've logged over 100 hours on this game and I'm still not sure I have their voices at all accurate. The fact that this takes place three years later and there's been some major character change helps, but there's only so far you can go with that license. Also, I have health problems and they make me groggy, which shows up in my sentence structure.

Luke got thousands of years of memories as Lorelei and 14ish years as a Dawn Age scientist who knew he was Lorelei, Asch got Luke's memories, major guilt-tripping, and sense beaten into him by Luke's comrades (I've got snippets of a prequel covering the 'I'm alive. Damn it! Can't that dreck at least let me have a heroic death if nothing else?' vs. 'You took Luke's life and so you will live it OR ELSE' period, as well as the Julia & Score story).

In any case, review, criticism, flames, rotten tomatoes will be gratefully accepted. I'm posting this partially so it will leave me alone and I can get back to the stuff that needs updating, in fact, but I am working on something that isn't a product of being mugged by the muses while having fun with the skit player available in the second playthrough.


End file.
